Peter Bradshaw 

The Round Up – review

A straightforward, heartfelt drama about the Nazi occupation of France. By Peter Bradshaw
  
  

The Round Up
Running for their lives ... Hugo Levendez and Oliver Cywie. Photograph: PR

The Nazi occupation is still a controversial subject in France. Just last month, on getting the red card at Cannes for his "Nazi" joke, Lars von Trier flung the "Vichy" jibe at the festival organisers: reminding them of the collaboration. This drama, from writer-director Rose Bosch, does a decent job of recreating the horror of this period. Thousands of Jews were rounded up in Paris in 1942, herded into a sports arena and then sent off to the camps, never to return. A single line over the final credits recalls that thousands more Jews were in fact hidden from the Gestapo by brave Parisians – but the drama itself toughly focuses on those who were cravenly delivered to the Nazis by complicit French police officers and civil servants. Jean Reno plays a kindly Jewish doctor who stayed with his patients; Mélanie Laurent (from Inglourious Basterds) is a nurse who did her best to help. It's a straightforward, heartfelt drama, well acted and well produced.

 

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