Après la guerre (1989, France & Germany)

The film is set in the last days of World War 2. In a rural French village, the mayor and his cronies are planning how they will welcome the American troops when they arrive -- any time now -- to liberate the village. A couple of village boys rush in to say that the American tanks are arriving, and everyone rushes out to the village square; but horror -- the tanks are retreating Germans, so the village people scatter indoors. All except the mayor, who has been getting his speech ready; he now comes out waving an American flag, and the passing Germans shoot him down, dead, and sweep on towards Germany.

In the recriminations that follow, the men of the village blame the boys, and fearing that they will be punished, they run away. Coming to a farmhouse, one of the boys, Antoine, takes a girl's dress from a washing line and disguises himself as a girl. They go to the nearby market town to get food, but the mother and the child to whom the distinctive dress belongs are there and they recognise the dress. The boys have to make a quick escape.

A little later, Antoine is peeing, in the open. An old man comes up and Antoine asks for directions, and the old man merely observes that it is a funny world, with girls peeing standing up nowadays.

The boys stumble across a wounded German soldier who is hiding in a mill building. He makes one of them go to get him food and medicine, but the initial hostility soon wears off and the remainder of the film follows the improbable trio as they help one another to survive.

In a dramatic scene, the German soldier is telling the boys that under his German uniform he is just a man like the French, and this is the justification for Antoine wearing the dress -- it's what is underneath the clothes that counts, not the external appearances.

Antoine spends most of the film wearing the dress, although he abandons a headscarf when the soldier has realised he is a boy.

This is an anti-war film pursuing the theme that we are all the same underneath; but anti-war films don't usually have happy endings.

HF April 2005

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