Starring: Susan Sarandon, Christopher Plummer, Gabriel Byrne, Max Von Sydow
Studio: Quebec-Ontario Production/Image Entertainment CEL4994DVD [Release date: July 22, 2008]
Video: 2.35:1 anamorphic/enhanced for 16:9 color
Audio: English DD 5.1, DD 2.0
Subtitles: English SDH, Spanish
Extras: “Making Of” featurette, theatrical trailer
Length: 99 minutes
Rating: *****
One look at the acting credits above and you will probably be certain this dramatic film will not be a waste of your time. It’s unusual to find such fine actors all together in one film. Then add a very moving story adapted from a novel about the consequences of war, and a majestic farm setting in Quebec (by the St. Lawrence, perhaps?) which provides some glorious panoramas of autumn colors in nature. Also, the transfer to DVD is perfect, with a resolution that looks almost as good as Blu-ray.
Sarandon plays a woman married to a farmer and dealing with mental instability due to her terrible experiences as an American young girl in 1942 France, when she was incarcerated in a camp near Paris from which they sent Jews and others to either other concentration camps in Germany or to the death camps. She has been keeping records of many of her fellow prisoners and contacts again the older man who saved her life at the camp and invites him to her home. He arrives with, unexpectedly, her long-lost love from the camp. The interactions of all of them, plus her grown son, illustrate the tremendous weight the three prisoners’ long-suppressed memories have put upon their lives. Sarandon’s husband doesn’t understand and is not sympathetic. The beauty of the Quebec farm is contrasted with distorted black & white flashbacks to the internment camp. In the end, the four people had (as the cover blurb states) “to open their hearts to learn to love again.” Definitely recommended!
