The path of most resistance

THE ARMY OF CRIME/ L'ARMÉE DU CRIMEDirected by Robert Guediguian. Starring Simon Abkarian, Virginie Ledoyen, Robinson Stevenin, Gregoire Leprince-Ringuet, Lola
Naymark, Yann Tregouet Club, IFI, Dublin, 139 min

THE FILMS of Robert Guediguian are, in one regard at least, a little like raw celery. Austere dramas such as The Last Mitterandand The Town Is Quietdon't provide much pleasure when you're actually getting them down, but afterwards you feel better about yourself and can guiltlessly follow up the roughage with some ice cream (or a Jason Statham film).

Maybe The Army of Crimewill be different. After all, the film does concern the contribution of foreign, largely leftist anti-fascists to the French Resistance. Here's a subject that oozes thrills. Well, the film certainly has much to recommend it, but, for good or ill, nobody is likely to confuse this unhurried, sober, very long drama with Inglourious Basterds.

Events begin with 10 members of the FTP-MOI, a division of the Resistance containing communists from Armenia, Spain and other ravaged countries, being hurried on to a bus and driven to the site of their execution. We then flashback to discover the origins of their involvement and the nature of their campaign against the Nazis.

The most significant member of the team is Missak Manouchian (Simon Abkarian), an Armenian poet who becomes aggressively politicised after being arrested by the increasingly antsy occupying forces. Assisted by his resilient lover (Virginie Ledoyen), Missak is appointed the slightly reluctant leader – at first he refuses to wield his own gun – of a cell that includes various bomb-makers, assassins and propagandists.

As ever, Guediguian coolly lays incidents before us without worrying too much about structure or narrative arcs. The steady accumulation of unease and the rigorous cataloguing of period

detail do ultimately batter you into partial submission. Perhaps the collaborationists’ constant parroting of the word “terrorist” is a bit overdone – after all, who doesn’t know that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter?

Still, the director does a good job of nodding discretely towards more contemporary movements and inviting us to make troubling comparisons.

All that noted, would it have killed Guediguian to make the film a tad more exciting? Pictures such as Gillo Pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiersand Jean-Pierre Melville's Army of Shadows(also about the resistance) managed to make the pulse race without sacrificing an ounce of integrity. In contrast, Robert again offers us more green vegetables with no sauce.