Best movie of this year hands down!

Expected more

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

I recall this being shown on local TV; still, I am not sure in which guise it was – since the film was originally shown as a two-part mini-series (running 176 minutes), while the edition I recently acquired was possibly a theatrical reduction of it with a length of just 125 minutes!It is yet another rare foray into the English language for director Chabrol; for the record, he would deal with this turbulent period of French history again in both STORY OF WOMEN (1988) and the documentary THE EYE OF VICHY (1993) – though, instead of regular lead Isabelle Huppert, here we have American Jodie Foster. She is okay under the circumstances (the film certainly does not condemn her initial lack of political commitment and apparent collaborationism, though her ultimate self-sacrifice does come off as overly contrived). Less effective are her Communist/resistance members lovers Michael Ontkean (for whom he forsakes the like-minded Alexandra Stewart) and Lambert Wilson; incidentally, this is the one film where Chabrol was able to express his politics! However, also involved with the heroine is German manufacturer Sam Neill – who does creditably too (despite the dubious accent).Predictably, Chabrol's ex-wife Stephane Audran turns up as well and, while ranking highly in the cast list, her role is both minor and unrewarding (at least in the shorter version); ditto, her Nazi lover John Vernon creates an initial impression but nothing subsequently comes of his character! On the other hand, the participation of veterans Micheline Presle (as an abortionist – a subject the director would focus on in the afore-mentioned STORY OF WOMEN) and Jean-Pierre Aumont (as Ontkean's disapproving bourgeois father) is notable, though brief; Christa Lang, Samuel Fuller's wife, is also on hand (as, reportedly, is the iconoclastic American film-maker himself – though his role seems to have been excised from this compressed edition as I would surely have recognized him otherwise!).Though the film has been much criticized for its commercial trappings (glossy production, star names, melodramatic plot), Chabrol's true métier as a director of thrillers emerges in a couple of key suspense sequences: the planting of a gun in a Nazi-infested hotel, followed by the assassination of a traitor, and the climactic springing from prison of the captured hit-man via the ruse of impersonation.

Jodie Foster plays Hélène in World War II's German-occupied Paris, where she is torn between the love for her boyfriend Jean, working for the resistance and the German administrator Bergmann, who will do anything to gain her affection.Watching Jodie Foster in the role you really see the promise and potential she showed as a young actress. Playing a young and precocious idealist, Hélène stumbles through life, never quite responsible, never quite concerned, while the war goes on around her.Sam Neill steals the show as the brilliantly suave, sick and terrible Nazi who falls deeply in love with Hélène.One aspect of the movie I find intriguing is the perspective. I'm used to seeing WWII films from the Jew's perspective, with Schindler's List, Holocaust, and The Story of Anne Frank and many others, and in a Rosencrantz and Guildenstern way, the bit players of the darker tales, The French are the main characters while the story of the Jews goes on in the background almost unaware. It is interesting to see the story from another angle.In the end, The Blood of Others is the story of a girl who does the wrong things because she's young, and does the right things out of love, but what she really believes is a childish ideal, and her life, though a short one, tells the tale of small but important sacrifices made during the war effort for the resistance. The movie some what falls short in this regard, because while we feel a loss, the overall film suffers from a lack of depth and tension.

Jodie Foster and Michael Ontkean playing French war resistors is a stretch of the imagination I could not entertain. This story should have been in French with French actors and actresses. I really do not like films that have English lines but songs that are in French etc. At least they did not attempt to have phony French accents. I hope Mr. Chabrol was paid well for this lapse in his usual brilliant film career. This is truly the worst film I have seen directed by this classic filmmaker. Towards the end of the film there is a bit of script writing involving a love-obsessed Nazi and Jodie Foster that is one of the silliest things I have ever seen. This film, as so many others do, seems to enjoy depicting Germans during World War II as somehow not intelligent. Storytellers seem to forget that they almost conquered all of Europe. This VHS will definitely be donated to the next charity yard sale in my neighborhood. Skip this film.

This movie has some points that invites a viewer: first of all, the story is based upon a novel written by the great Simone de Beauvoir; second, the movie has a fine director, Monsieur Claude Chabrol and last but not least, a good cast where we can find some great names, like Jodie Foster and Sam Neill (in a great performance, as a sick and deeply in love nazist). The important is that all these points are not a deception. The movie has a witty and elegant screenplay, the direction of Monsieur Chabrol, if it's not a overwhelming work of art, is good and convincing and the cast is really a standout. A good love and war story that goes on in a pleasant way. Watch out: the very last scene is a really knockout! Cotation (7 of 10).