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Review by Simon Bell |
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DVD SPECIAL FEATURES: Interview with Cate Blanchett; Director's commentary;
'The Real Charlotte Grays' documentary; Interview with Gillian Armstrong;
Deleted scenes.
BASED on the bestselling novel by Sebastian Faulks, but with some thoroughgoing
shifts in tone and narrative, Charlotte Gray centres on a heroine joining
the Second World War effort and falling in love.
Recruited to the Special Operations Executive, she requests to be sent to
France as an undercover agent to trace her RAF pilot lover, shot down on a
mission. There she's drawn to the struggle of those trying to liberate Vichy
France from its Nazi clutches.
Ms Gray is posted to the remote but idyllic farm of a miserly and truculent
old git, Levade (Michael Gambon - wasted, but seeming not to care anyway)
whose son, Julien (Billy Crudup - as French as Cheddar but otherwise watchable)
is a committed member of la résistance.
But it soon becomes clear her mission of espionage is second fiddle to her
search for the dashing officer Gregory (Rupert Penry-Jones - a drip unworthy
of risking life and limb).
Such a rare and remarkable role lies at the heart of this wartime romance
and, of course, Cate Blanchett does it all the justice it deserves... and
some.
An intelligent and daring woman also prone to susceptibility, Charlotte Gray
transmogrifies into French Resistance fighter Dominique Gilbert with all the
silkiness of her new Continental lingerie: It's an interpretation as expertly
judged as Blanchett only can. She even manages, amongst a veritable wealth
of laughable attempts at foreign cadence, a half-decent Scottish accent (although
somebody more Scottish than me will have to tell you where in Scotland she's
supposed to have been nurtured).
Not
one of the supporting cast, meanwhile, manages anything nearing a Gallic vintage,
instead lapsing into just another 'Allo 'Allo! (at one point, the script even
allows for a "listen to me carefully").
Once again, the period atmosphere so discernible in Gillian Armstrong's previous
literary adaptations My Brilliant Career (1979), Little Women (1994) and (earlier
Blanchett-starrer) Oscar and Lucinda (1997) is strong.
Nevertheless, it can only go one way - and unfortunately, despite all the
hard work of a few, it's the way of Captain Corelli's Mandolin.
For those who can stomach bad linguistics and fleeting moments of misdirection,
however, this an old-fashioned love story with all the romance of an old movie.
