A Self-Made Hero

Stylish but slight, this French drama stars Mathieu Kassovitz, the writer/director of 1996's Hate (La Haine), as a chronic dissembler who talks his way into French Resistance circles following World War II; the idea, one gathers, is that his transformation mirrors that of France's equally successful (and equally troubling) post-war metamorphosis from collaborator to freedom fighter. In a way, this is the downbeat flipside of Preston Sturges' classic Hail the Conquering Hero, in which an American serviceman discharged for chronic hay fever plays along when his hometown is mistakenly informed that he's a war hero; trouble is, while the film has surface charm to spare--Kassovitz is wonderfully vacant--it more or less ignores the most provocative issues raised by its story, so that what could have been a complex masterpiece is reduced to merely a solid, shallow entertainment. Recommended anyway. (M D'Angelo)