La Rafle Review

La Rafle Review - San Francisco Chronicle

Capsule Review: "La Rafle" (The Roundup)

from the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival
Sunday, July 17th, 2011

Like "Sarah's Key", this film deals with the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup, but it deals with that event exclusively and is set in 1942 (with an afterward set in 1945). It shows Jewish families in Paris getting along, to the best they can, settling into the patterns of normal life and trying to deny rumblings and rumors that they're all about to be uprooted and transported east. The film has an A-list cast, with two stars many Americans will recognize: Melanie Laurent as a Christian nurse, who goes to work at the Velodrome and sees horrors; and Jean Reno as a Jewish doctor who passes up the chance to escape to care for the sick at the Velodrome. Some of this is almost too much to bear: The horrible conditions, the scenes of families being forcibly separated, the sheer madness and in humanity of it - and the sickening realization that this was mostly French people doing it to other French people. One despairs of human nature. As such, the occasionally mishandled moment - such as the unconvincing high-level drama of Hitler conversing with his henchmen - sometimes comes as a relief. In French with English subtitles.

- Mick LaSalle

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