Charlotte Gray

Charlotte doesn't fall in love with Julien, as much as "Dominique" and Julien fall into an intense trauma induced war time bond. The two scenes of embrace and heavy petting were both for show—though who wouldn't be excited with love-making (even faux) from Billy Crudup? Even so, the script was poor, even ridiculous at times. The early scenes with Charlotte and her lover, the RAF pilot, had lovely chemistry but went on far too long considering he dies off so early. Then comparing his tragic demise with the shooting massacre of the French resisters was odd and lop-sided I think. Followed with "Dominique" yelling at the haranguing Jewish boys that she's not their mother, when the parents have just been shipped off to their own likely murder was tone-deaf in the script. These counter intuitive nexus of emotion (anti-hero) sprinkled throughout might have been intriguing and played better with stronger direction. As it is they just fell flat. There is so much I really want to love about this film, but in the end there is so much to really hate about this film.