MOVIE SCENE
A woman behind enemy lines in 'Charlotte Gray'

By Marshall Fine
The (Westchester, N.Y.) Journal News

•	"Charlotte Gray" is often rousing, just as often tragic, with a vaulting romantic arc that holds it together. It's the kind of film that's likely to get lost amid the big holiday players, but it's a title worth remembering for future viewing.

But then we don't need new movies to remind us of that, do we? Old ones — such as "The Sorrow and the Pity" — do just fine.

This film, by Gillian Armstrong, is adapted from Sebastian Faulks' novel by Jeremy Brock. It examines the unexpected nature of heroism, as exemplified by the mission of a young Scottish woman, Charlotte Gray (Cate Blanchett), who parachutes into France to work with the French resistance.

Charlotte's motives are not wholly altruistic. Though she volunteers for the training out of a sense of duty, she eventually accepts her mission for at least one other reason: She hopes to find the young British pilot she loves, who has been shot down over France.

Once she lands in the French countryside, however, her training comes back to haunt her. "You can't afford to get too close," she has been told of her contacts with the French resistance — but almost immediately she finds herself embroiled in the lives of the people she meets.

Her mission — under the assumed named of Dominique — is to serve as a conduit of information between another British agent (who is in touch with London) and the local resistance members, led by Julien (Billy Crudup). Her cover story is that she is visiting the village, Lezignac, from Paris, staying at the former inn of Julien's father, Levade (Michael Gambon).

Though she is only there for a few weeks, she quickly becomes involved with Julien in trying to save two boys, Jews whose parents already have been shipped to Poland and the death camps. She also finds herself drawn to Julien, though she persists in her mission to obtain news of the British flyer, Peter (Rupert Penry-Jones), with whom she had a brief but meaningful fling before he disappeared.

As she quickly discovers, working with an underground resistance movement is nerve-rattling work: a method-acting role in which you must live your part, understanding that anyone you meet might betray you (hey, it's France) and that even the good work you do could lead to sudden death for someone you care about. "War makes us into people we didn't know we were," one character notes, and the effect is just as often negative as it is salutary.

Still, Charlotte's confusion at times translates into narrative confusion as well. The audience is occasionally in danger of losing its place and unable to tell the players apart — which makes the plotting unnecessarily murky at times.

Blanchett, who has given memorable performances this year already in "Bandits" and "The Shipping News" (not to mention "Lord of the Rings" and "The Man Who Cried"), conveys this woman's no-nonsense naturalism, occasionally melting to reveal a heart that aches and yearns. Still, she doesn't have much chemistry with Crudup, whose sleepy-eyed approach makes his character seem unnecessarily vague and inconsistent.

Still, Armstrong has made a straight-ahead drama with thriller touches that works surprisingly well. I wish someone would come up with a way to convey that people who are speaking English are meant to be understood to be speaking French, without giving them French accents.