I Have Mixed Feelings About Memoir of War

I'll admit that I haven't read La Douleur, the novel from which Emmanuel Finkiel's French-language film Memoir of War finds its source material. Nevertheless, I wanted to give my thoughts on the adaptation, and though there were plenty of things I liked about it, I want to manage expectations right up front by stating that this movie was a hard one to sit through. I don't want to use the word boring for fear of sounding juvenile, but I'll admit that exciting the audience isn't quite the movie's number one priority. It's a movie about Marguerite, a Parisian woman living in an occupied France during World War II, and her affair with a Nazi collaborator named Rabier while her husband is a prisoner of war. This movie can be intimate and touching, but many of its slower stretches didn't do much more than remind me why World War II movies tend to be about those fighting the actual war rather than those watching it from a distance.

Still, Memoir of War is an undeniably introspective piece, content to live in Marguerite's head much of the time. It's more about her, less about what happens around her, and most of all about her perception of her world. Likely my favorite thing about this movie, this deep emotional dive doubles down on a satisfying obsession with the little things, lending an extreme believability as if the movie were living and breathing. But while this introspection is the film's greatest strength, it is also its greatest weakness. The soul-searching it subjects Marguerite to grants us a window into her mind and even her soul, but it also robs the movie of narrative punch. The characters in this movie don't do a whole lot, and Memoir of War can often feel passive, if personable. This movie is really slow, even painfully slow at times, and I too frequently found myself wishing it would take more initiative, get out of Marguerite's head for but a moment, and move.

Despite being a somewhat one-note piece, much of what makes the good things about this movie work comes down to its performances. I was very impressed by Melanie Thierry's understated portrayal of Marguerite. She brings a believable subtlety to the role, never overacting or conversely falling off the other end into phoning a performance in. Extremely natural throughout, I sensed in her a striking weariness that you will too. This movie is trying to act as a character study of Marguerite, and it certainly succeeds on that level. However, it doesn't ever seem to aspire to be more, so Memoir of War too often feels like it's lacking necessary substance, plodding along for no reason other than that it wants to be taken seriously, is constrained by its source material, or some combination of both.

The bottom line is that I feel torn over Memoir of War. For sure, Melanie Thierry's portrayal of Marguerite is incredible, and in some ways, I liked how much this movie banked on her performance to carry it. However, with this fierce and intentional prioritization of her character comes a number of trade-offs. This movie is sorely lacking nearly any sense of momentum or movement. It could have shaved a half-hour off of its total runtime and been absolutely fine, and you will feel every second of its length. Memoir of War was a chore to watch, an ultimately rewarding chore to be sure, but a chore nonetheless. While Emmanuel Finkiel has undoubtedly captured the relational side of the home front well, he also seems to capture the painfully mundane as well, perhaps more of it than he meant to.

Memoir of War - 6/10

Proverbs 24:17-20