One Day You'll Understand (2008)
Director: Amos Gitai
Movie review
From Time Out New York
“You mustn’t forget, but you can’t undo what’s done.” So goes the mission statement of One Day You’ll Understand (more cryptically and appropriately titled Later for its European release), Amos Gitai’s counterintuitive, diligently understated exploration of the legacy of anti-Semitism in a mixed-religion, middle-class French family.
Elusiveness is key here, as half-Jewish Parisian businessman Victor Bastien (Girardot) is thwarted in his efforts to reconstruct a family tree by the stubborn resistance of his mother, Rivka (octogenarian Moreau, still sassily beautiful), to clarify the fate of her parents during France’s Nazi occupation. Neither a damning document signed by his long-dead father nor admonitions from his sister (Blanc) and wife (Devos) dissuade Victor from pursuing the truth, but it’s his young children who pointedly receive Rivka’s confession.
As with 2000’s Kippur, Gitai invigorates the narrative drawn from Jérôme Clément’s autobiographical novel with a tactility that extends to location-shoot barriers (interior walls become featured players) and revelatory ambient sounds. The effect beautifully underscores the film’s thesis that memory is physical in basis and limited as moral compass, and helps render the seemingly meager fruits of Victor’s efforts—one scrap of paper—a moving vindication.
Author: Mark Holcomb
Time Out New York Issue 683: October 30 - November 5, 2008
Cast & crew
Director: Amos Gitai
Cast: Jeanne Moreau, Hippolyte Girardot, Emmanuelle Devos, Dominique Blanc, Daniel Duval full cast
Duration: 90 mins
US Release: Oct 31 2008
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