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| Philippe Torreton in Captain Conan |
Cast: Philippe Torreton, Samuel Le Bihan, Bernard Le Coq, Catherine Rich, François Berléand, Claude Rich, André Falcon, Claude Brosset, Crina Muresan, Cécile Vassort, François Levantal, Pierre Val. Screenplay: Jean Cosmos, Bertrand Tavernier, based on a novel by Roger Vercel. Cinematography: Alain Choquart. Production design: Guy-Claude François. Film editing: Luce Grunenwaldt. Music: Oswald d'Andrea.
Wars don't end neatly, as we should know by now. In Bertrand Tavernier's Captain Conan the armistice ending World War I has been signed, but for the French soldiers in Eastern Europe, it hasn't made much difference. For one thing, the Russian civil war following the Bolshevik revolution is still raging, and for the French government and its allies that means the threat of incursions into the Balkans. So a group of French special forces trained in hand-to-hand guerrilla combat, led by Lt. Conan (Philippe Torreton), is sent to Romania. But the group is made up of a lot of rough types with criminal backgrounds, and Conan is hard-pressed to keep them in line. When the military starts trying to enforce discipline with courts martial, a young officer named Norbert (Samuel Le Bihan) is put in charge of trying the offenders even though his background isn't in law but in the academic study of literature. Conan and Norbert join in an odd couple relationship as they try to take a middle ground between by-the-book military justice and a humane view of the offenders. Tavernier's film mixes action and questions of wartime morality in a rich, thoughtful fashion. It's anchored by the charismatic performance of Torreton and the contrastingly quiet one of Le Bihan.
