GetPapa Far from Perfect, Far from Terrible

Plustown A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

Billie Morin This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Lidia Draper Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

blanche-2 "Female Agents" from 2007 is the true story of Lise Villameur (here Louise Desfontaines, played by Sophie Marceau), an agent who worked against the Nazis during World War II. There are several films about female World War II spies: Carve Her Name with Pride is one, also a true story and very moving, and the film Odette, also very good.Desfontaines is recruited by her brother Pierre (Julien Boisselier) to find women to help rescue a British geologist from a German hospital. He had been sent to study the soil on the beaches at Normandy in preparation for D-Day and was captured. For the mission, Louise chooses Jeanne (Julie Depardieu), a prostitute who is in prison for murder; an explosives expert Gaëlle Lemenech (Déborah François); and the ex-fiancé of Colonel Karl Heindrich, Suzy Desprez (Marie Gillain). The mission goes off well, but to their consternation, Pierre has another job for them. He needs them to go to Paris to kill Colonel Heindrich who believes the Allies are planning to land in Normandy.Excellent film, suspenseful, gritty, dark, and atmospheric, with wonderful performances by everyone, but especially Marceau, who plays the tough, quick, and enterprising Louise.I'm not sure why this film received a low rating on IMDb, and I also don't know where the bland title came from. I believe "Les femmes de l'ombre" means "Women of the Shadows." There must be something more exciting than "Female Agents."This isn't your typical movie; some of it is hard to watch, but the courage of these women is quite amazing.

Joxerlives Always been fascinated by the world of SOE ever since growing up watching Secret Army as a kid. This is one of the best films I've ever seen on the subject, much better than Charlotte Gray or TV series like 'Wish Me Luck' which were distinctly mediocre. Was actually unaware that this was a French language film although this doesn't detract from the action at all. It also made sense that French speakers would practice their language exclusively before returning to their homeland so that they don't accidentally lapse into English by mistake or speak British accented French. I would very much have liked to have seen more detail in terms of the commando training which has always been one of the more fascinating aspects of the story (they all seem to be mysteriously parachute qualified virtually instantly?). The story isn't bad although you wonder that they would give such priority to killing a single SS Colonel even if he was given Rommel's ear by the 3rd of June 1944 it would be too late for them to do anything about it. From a military perspective it isn't bad although everyone falls into the shoot from the hip tradition. When the Colonel is giving his briefing I kept expecting the interviewing officers to ask him if the geologist couldn't have been the diversion, intended to draw German forces away from Calais. You also wonder that the French officer tells him the truth about the Mulberry harbours rather than try to buy time by bluffing, saying they're for protecting the landing craft from underwater attack or something?Obviously there's a lot of torture here but it's never gratuitous, you still feel for the captured religious agent who cannot bare to kill herself as she's supposed to and breaks under extreme pain as anyone would. The ending despite the Allied victory is downbeat and maudlin, you'd have liked the sole survivor to have a big family and name her kids after her fallen comrades but things don't always work out that way (presumably she lost her baby due to the torture and may not have been able to have any more?). Her looking through the photos and coming across her friend who has been tortured to death is heartrending although couldn't she have come up with a less drastic 'diversion' at the railway station?. What's perhaps even more interesting is the fate of the young French collaborator who switches sides and becomes the hero of the Resistance, we last see him capturing the SS Colonel's assistant (and what happens to him? Shot as a war criminal or recruited by the West to help in the Cold War?). All told a good film but I'd have liked a little more

Claudio Carvalho In 1944, in London, Lieutenant Pierre Desfontaines (Julien Boisselier) assigns his sister Louise Desfontaines (Sophie Marceau) to convince three other women to form a five-woman task force under his command to rescue a British geologist from a German hospital in the countryside of France. The geologist was assigned by Colonel Maurice Buckmaster (Colin David Reese) in a reconnaissance mission of the soil of the beaches at Normandy for the D-Day and had been captured by the Germans. Louise and Pierre force the whore Jeanne Faussier (Julie Depardieu) that is imprisoned for murdering her pimp; the explosives expert Gaëlle Lemenech (Déborah François) that misses action; and the former dancer and fiancé of Colonel Karl Heindrich (Moritz Bleibtreu), Suzy Desprez (Marie Gillain) using blackmail and unethical methods to fly to France and join the Italian agent Maria Luzzato (Maya Sansa) in the assignment. They are well-succeeded but when they deliver the geologist to the British airplane, Pierre betrays the group and does not allow the women to fly back to London. He forces them to travel to Paris to kill Colonel Heindrich that suspects that the landing of the allied forces will be through the Normandy, in a dangerous mission. "Les Femmes de l'Ombre" is a sort of French Inglorious "Female" Bastards. The plot recalls the 1978 Italian film "Quel Maledetto Treno Blindato" a.k.a. "Inglorious Bastards", with three rogue women assigned to a very dangerous mission in occupied France. The plot is absurd but entertains, with the women having one-day training and parachuting in the night and attacking a German hospital full of soldiers in a well-synchronized operation. The characters are not well-developed and inconsistent, and Louise is a nurse and a sniper; Jeanne is a selfish whore capable to self-sacrifice for a cause; Liliane hates Heindrich, but when she sees him, she changes; Gaëlle is expert in explosives and absolutely unsuitable for the second mission. The greatest problem in this film is the reference that it is based on a true story. My vote is six.Title (Brazil): "Contratadas para Matar" ("Hired to Kill")

dbk-923-252984 This film is probably based on true events but the keyword here is "based", as in very remotely based. I think the blame should be put on the writer and director who did an incredibly poor job out of a potential hit, messing it up to the point of turning a war-time thriller into a hilarious comedy, with no intention of doing so.The scenario lacked credibility from beginning to end. After a mere day of training, these poor girls manage to parachute at night without even a scratch, perform a perfectly synchronized strip show on music they'd never heard before and without the slightest possibility of a rehearsal.Sophie the sharp-shooter doesn't hold her breath while aiming, holds her rifles on both occasions at the shoulder, without support, hence shaking like a leaf, yet hitting her targets in the darkest of nights at the start of the film and later missing an unmissable shot in the subway with a state-of-the-art rifle in perfect conditions.At one point the girls get into a shoot-out (at the hospital) and hold their Stens at arm's length, like a bunch of dirty diapers, without getting their wrists damaged by the recoil and, of course, hitting their targets square on instead of shooting at birds.Such scenes were highly reminiscent of Charlie's Angels at their best, although the latter film is intended to be seen as funnily over-the-top, whereas the former is supposed to be realistic and based on true events.If all these failings were not sufficient to trigger bouts of hilarious laughter in the audience, the scenario pushes on and arranges for the girls to always be at the right spot at the right time with the right contacts, help and equipment, as though they had planned and rehearsed all the mishaps of their mission hundreds of times beforehand, a bit in the style of James Bond films. Simply not credible for such a story.The director jumps continuously from one scene to the next without the slightest hint of fluidity nor continuity, in the manner of a Marvel's comic. The girls look panicked throughout but yet manage to make all the right moves with nerves of steel, with a clear vision of when to hit, or shoot, or walk instead of running, and yet fail to kill the bad guy on so many occasions until the very end, as prescribed by the confused scenario, naturally.The sobbing looks fake in nearly all relevant scenes. The girls' characters evolve erratically in all psychological directions, as though they'd had weeks to think through what was happening to them and change their minds. The scenes of torture and suicide by cyanide pill have an air of strange impressionism derived from a 70's film by Godard. The bad Nazis have the look and feel of choir boys.In short it feels like a girlie's remake of Inglorious Basterds, shallow as hell, making very little sense or, rather, asking the viewer to mentally fill the gaps where the director lacked the time, or skill, or both, to package an otherwise interesting story into a sensible unit.Contrary to some comments I've read, the French know how to make excellent action films, write credible scenarii, and act convincingly, probably more so than most productions made in Hollywood. Unfortunately "les femmes de l'ombre" is a very bad example and shouldn't be seen as a landmark of French film-making, unless of course one looks at it as a comical parody of a would-be serious war-time story, in which case it remarkably hits the jackpot.I can't go so far as to recommend against watching it because, given enough imagination and little attention to detail, I wouldn't be surprised if someone found something interesting in it after all. I mean, let's face it, if you're a teenage girl or a romantic grandma, you'll probably like it.