Le sang des autres

Jodie Foster plays Hélène in World War II's German-occupied Paris, where she is torn between the love for her boyfriend Jean, working for the resistance and the German administrator Bergmann, who will do anything to gain her affection.

Watching Jodie Foster in the role you really see the promise and potential she showed as a young actress. Playing a young and precocious idealist, Hélène stumbles through life, never quite responsible, never quite concerned, while the war goes on around her.

Sam Neill steals the show as the brilliantly suave, sick and terrible Nazi who falls deeply in love with Hélène.

One aspect of the movie I find intriguing is the perspective. I'm used to seeing WWII films from the Jew's perspective, with Schindler's List, Holocaust, and The Story of Anne Frank and many others, and in a Rosencrantz and Guildenstern way, the bit players of the darker tales, The French are the main characters while the story of the Jews goes on in the background almost unaware. It is interesting to see the story from another angle.

In the end, The Blood of Others is the story of a girl who does the wrong things because she's young, and does the right things out of love, but what she really believes is a childish ideal, and her life, though a short one, tells the tale of small but important sacrifices made during the war effort for the resistance. The movie some what falls short in this regard, because while we feel a loss, the overall film suffers from a lack of depth and tension.