Betrayal joins a relatively modest list of recent Second World War set resistance thrillers that includes the likes of Black Book; The Army of Crime and Lust, Caution. It is a film not as good as any of those, and with a distinct debt, it often feels, owed to that of Black Book in its covering of young attractive women of one set side manoeuvring their way back and forth between their resistance and the enemy – a lot of sex and sleaze apparent as numerous supporting acts all get tangled up in chaos born out of illicit actions. Furthermore, an example of a bad Second World War film of this ilk might be found in 2005's the Aryan Couple; an overly long, ponderous, un-cinematic drag with the threat of a Jewish man's art collection being stolen at the core of it: six million people are dying around the corner in death camps and we're here trying to muster up some welling for these idiots and their landscapes. Betrayal is additionally a good step back from what could be perceived as a fethisisation of clandestine action during the era of World War Two; Tarantino's recent Inglourious Basterds a rampaging; romping; no-holds barred resistance thriller which, to it's credit, went a long way in restoring certain amounts of faith toward its creator, but sidestepped challenging narratives and grounded characters, whom didn't resemble anything even remotely close to that of anything else other than graphic novel archetypes, for flat out thrills and spills of a more prosaic variety.
For the record, I happened to quite enjoy Hakon Gunderson's 2010 film; a film with a menacing, brooding atmosphere as suspicion and intrigue plays out in a locale already rife with hatred and aggression. I enjoyed its burning sense of gamesmanship, Gunderson's film effectively a mood piece instilling a sense that resonates throughout suggesting most characters already know absolutely everything corrupt and depraved there is to know about certain others, but just don't necessarily have enough in the form of hard evidence to actually blow everything out yet. The film covers that of Eva Karlsen, a young Norwegien women played by performer Lene Nystrøm, whose tale of coming to operate with that nation's resistance in occupied Oslo is the order of the day. We begin in the early 1990s, the film coming to form one long flashback as an elderly Eva lays everything out to her granddaughter in a rich Californian home, as the revealing of certain truths for the first time becomes apparent.
Beginning in the 1940s at a large social function, Gunderson kicks things off in the style of Schindler's List; a further revealing of certain business entrepreneurs meeting amidst the aforementioned character Eva dancing in the style of burlesque on stage, as Nazi officers mingle around for whatever reason, implementing our thoughts. Eva, the actress whom plays her in this younger incarnation additionally a singer and a dancer, is charged by her resistance accomplices to infiltrate the life of a German Gestapo Major named Kruger (Otto), whose possession of certain trinkets are of great interest to that of the group. An early instance of Gunderson's ability to deal with the lower-set, more intimate instances of great drama and tension away from the more expansively driven visual sequences occurs when Eva slips a copy of a key into a mould whilst he's out of the room to exterior chorus' of Hitler youth songs and chants that act as an oral extension of Kruger's own power.
Things are complicated when, what is effectively a tax man with a doctorate, Dr. Walter (Tschiersch) arrives; the man charged with checking up on the owner of the nightclub from the opening scene in Tor Lindblom (Såheim), who's in twisted cahoots with Kruger over shifty deals and distribution that sees both of them come out richer. Things are even harder for Tor when it's revealed he desires a relationship with Eva, but her true affections are with a Norwegian pilot named Svein (Conradi), whom was shot down in the English Channel, no less, and managed to lumber his way back to Oslo instilling workmanlike qualities. The film's clawing interplay between each of these parties concocts the bulk of the film, the majority of it a lot more interesting than it has any right to be; Gunderson striking us as a director far more adept at developing and shooting these instances in which characters attempt to wedge out the truth of certain others' nature, all of it arriving with a sense of underplayed menace making for good viewing.
We enjoy the film's sense of noir; throughout, the film covering characters we sense are not entirely certain just as to where they stand on either side of a proverbial line. Kruger certainly makes money for himself and backs up the German war effort in his being there, but how much of what he makes on the side is filtering its way through to the Nazi's central hub? Equally, his partner in crime Tor is betraying his own occupied people and growing fat in the process marking the character of Walter out as, in spite of his affiliation with the Nazi party, initially one of very few characters on a straighter, narrower path than most. Additionally, its stylised lighting and generally low-level colour scheme works with the other technical qualities; all of it combining to create something alluding to film noir without necessarily making an obvious, World War Two-set clandestine apparentness about proceedings as was perhaps evident, although not its detriment, in something like Soderbergh's The Good German. In spite of a few issues that rear up, and against the poorer opinions that have arisen following its release, one would find it difficult to say that one did not enjoy the journey one was taken on during Betrayal, a film made by someone I wouldn't mind seeing more work from in the future given the aesthetical qualities and prominent sense of ambition in his debut.
