| CHARLOTTE GRAY |
 2001 –
Germany / UK / Australia
Director: Gillian Armstrong - Reviewed by Linda
Charlotte, a Scottish lass cavorting around wartime London, finds out that her RAF pilot-lover (Rupert Penry-Jones) has been shot down over France and is MIA, presumed dead. She decides to help the war effort by going undercover to help the resistance movement in France, and hopefully find her man while she's there. You see, we find out early on that Charlotte is fluent in French—so much so that her accent can pass as native Parisian (we learn this as she playfully teaches her lover some pillow-talk français before he is sent off on his mission). But after going through rigorous training in England, getting a new identity, and being flung out of an airplane over the French countryside, Charlotte (now Dominque) is found by a couple of boys speaking... English? Wait, now... where are we? Charlotte/Dominque meets up with hottie French resistance fighter Julien (Billy Crudup speaking English with... a Polish accent?), and stays with his father (Michael Gambon, speaking British English, making no accent effort whatsoever), under the guise of being a housekeeper and caretaker for two orphaned Jewish boys. Throw in a love story, some tense standoffs with the Germans, lots of ridiculously good cheekbone structure (both Cate and Billy), and a whole country of "French" villagers communicating only in English, and you've got a mildly intriguing but often frustrating WWII drama. This film feels like a throwaway effort both on the part of the normally excellent Cate Blanchett, and the always-watchable director Gillian Armstrong. C'mon women, don't dumb-down the language factor for your audience (or at least get an accent coach), work on the chemistry between your stars, and for god's sake, don't let your screenwriter get lazy at the end of the film! That had to be the single dorkiest closing line I've heard in an otherwise serious film in a long time! I wanted to be more interested, more moved, and more absorbed than I was. But Charlotte Gray just ended up being forgettable. |
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Charlotte
Gray had me furrowing my brow literally from the opening scene. As the
camera swoops around a lovely green countryside, there is a woman speaking in
voice-over. Does she have an accent? What sort of accent is that? From what
little I had heard about the film in advance, I thought it was about a British
woman, but the voice said "war" like "wore", with a flat,
very deliberate "r". Of course it was the
almost-always-fabulous Cate Blanchett speaking, as the titular character
Charlotte Gray. But Cate continues struggling with her accent through the
first 10 minutes of the film, until someone says to her character, "Oh! So
you're Scottish!" Oh! She is??? Turns out that the all-over-the-map
accent was just the first of several flaws in Charlotte Gray that distracted
from a somewhat interesting story (based on the novel by Sebastian Faulks).
