Film

Intimate Enemies (2007)

Director: Florent Emilio Siri

Movie review

From Time Out London

Laudable, perhaps, for including depictions of the  more hidden aspects – notable  torture –  of French military policy in pre-independence Algeria and attempting to deal with the implications of the complex mix of French and Algerian personnel in the French army, this most recent French-Algerian war film, nevertheless, suffers from coming in the wake of the far superior ‘Mon Colonel’ and ‘Days of Glory’.

It’s not helped, either, by the casuistry of Patrick Rotman’s episodic screenplay, which fails satisfactorily to dramatise the historical, martial and personal conflicts affecting a combatant French company in 1959 through the relationship of an ‘idealistic’ new officer (Benoît Magimel) and his battle-hardened Indo-China-vet sergeant (Albert Dupontel). Director Florent Emilio Siri (‘The Nest’, ‘Hostage’) shows  ability in action  sequences  and group dynamics but  his film never develops sufficiently to raise it much above the conventional.

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