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CHARLOTTE GRAY

CHARLOTTE GRAY
© 2001 Warner Bros.

In 1942, Charlotte Gray (Cate Blanchett) is a Scottish nurse working in London during the Blitz. Her ability to speak fluent French piques the interest of a government official from the Special Operations Executive unit, who offers Charlotte a job, but Charlotte demurs. Then she falls in love with RAF pilot Peter (Rupert Penry-Jones), who returns her feelings and inadvertently awakens Charlotte's desire to emulate what she perceives as his bravery and heroism. When Peter is shot down over France and reported missing, Charlotte contacts the SOE and volunteers, hoping she'll be able to find her lover while on assignment. Instead, Charlotte parachutes into a field outside a small French village, masquerading as a member of the French Resistance who is in turn pretending to be an apolitical war refugee. Local politics, even among the Resistance, are almost overwhelming and it's practically impossible to accomplish anything. CHARLOTTE GRAY in fact does its part to explain why so many people succumbed to numb cooperation with the Nazis even the tiniest acts of kindness are fraught with peril here.

There's a continental European feel to CHARLOTTE GRAY, even though its heroine is a British citizen (and both director Gillian Armstrong and leading lady Blanchett are Australian). The screenplay by Jeremy Brock, based on Sebastian Faulks' novel, makes good use of understatement and irony, allowing the story to unfold organically, so that its pattern emerges gradually rather than with the straightforward urgency of a more conventional thriller. Charlotte's odyssey as a spy is almost the antithesis of what she and we expect until the underlying situation reasserts itself with shocking force.

Director Armstrong has an eye for rural beauty and a calm manner that makes violence all the more startling when it occurs she draws us into a very naturalistic environment. The excellent and versatile Blanchett (currently onscreen in other films as Elvish royalty and a wild woman) makes the self-effacing, resolute and profoundly moral Charlotte fascinating, even though she lacks darkness even when she threatens to be undone by what is going on around her, we sense that she is incorruptible, but she always remains human. Michael Gambon, as the pragmatic father of a Resistance fighter (Billy Crudup), likewise fills his character with persuasive, brusque resignation, tempered with a hint of something softer.

One of the best things about CHARLOTTE GRAY is that it conveys precisely what it seems to intend we feel as though we are watching a particular and intimate story that is taking place in a dangerous, complicated and much larger world. In this respect, it is especially lifelike, which makes its tale of how easily people can literally destroy one another that much more powerful.