One might think that a film set in Nazi-occupied France with a lead and most of a cast that can’t convincingly pull off a French accent would be a problem for a movie (which it is), yet the astonishing failure of pretty much every other aspect of “Resistance” manages to overshadow even that. Writer/director Jonathan Jakubowicz tries to balance light-hearted and funny with punishingly cruel and mean, teasing at both yet succeeding at neither. And while its heart is in the right place, the only thing the movie accomplishes is to lift the veil on a largely unknown story about a real-life performer who deserves better than this.
After a quick cold open in Germany on November 9, 1938 (Kristallnacht) to remind the audience that Nazis are indeed bad, the film shifts to Cherbourg, France, where teenager Marcel Marceau (Jesse Eisenberg, playing 16 at 36) is performing solo as a clown in a cabaret show. This puts Marcel at odds with his butcher father, who wants his son to follow in the family business rather than waste his time with such artistic nonsense. As Jews in Nazi-occupied territory, they are both marked as “other,” yet with the formal declaration of war a little way off, they are allowed to continue their lives somewhat normally.
It is during this uneasy period that a group of young Jewish orphans arrives in Cherbourg. A local troupe of Boy and Girl Scouts is taking care of the kids, and while Marcel dislikes children and has little interest in doing anything except watching out for himself, once he gets a look at those sweet cherub faces, his heart melts and he becomes fully committed to the cause. It’s an abrupt turnaround, yet “Resistance” isn’t about Marcel’s growth or evolution as a character, but rather a showcase for the heroics of the French resistance.
As the movie progresses, World War II starts in earnest, the crackdown on the Jews in France becomes more severe, and a Gestapo officer, Klaus Barbie (Matthias Schweighöfer), enters the orbit of the main characters. Most of them are fully formed at this point, though, which doesn’t allow for the central conflict of the story’s second act to engender any real growth in the characters. Things get tougher for Marcel and his compatriots, sure, and the situation calls for a change in their tactics as it concerns their resistance efforts (and the children in their care), yet there aren’t any real curveballs, here.
And that’s the first of many problems for the film, which tells a noble and honorable story, to be sure, yet does so in a way that is wholly familiar and rote. There’s the “reluctant” hero (though again, in this film, that reluctance lasts about ten minutes), the sadistic baddie, and even a strained love story thrown in for good measure, which all lead to a conclusion that feels more or less preordained from the jump. The characters are all so uniform and pre-scored that nothing about “Resistance” feels organic or surprising, except for the abrupt, brutal violence squeezed between the whimsical mime scenes played for laughs.
Eisenberg is a fine actor and plays stoic wrapped around internal angst well, but he’s not known for his physical attributes. And while appropriately lean and petite, he’s no mime. The man he plays is the quintessential version of an art form with few equals, and having Eisenberg clomp around mugging for the camera feels similar to an actor who has never before played any sport taking on the role of Michael Jordan or Pelé. Luckily for Eisenberg, his wandering French accent, which is present at times and absent at others, is largely overshadowed by these deficiencies as a physical performer, which are distractingly bad enough that one often forgets what a terrible job he’s doing with the voice work.
Jakubowicz does decent work setting up his shots, and keeping the film’s appearances up with set design and costuming, yet as far as pacing goes, it could be a bit tighter. There’s a few side plots about the lost dreams of Marcel’s father (Karl Markovics) and the budding romance between a couple of the resistance members that are indeed effective, but somewhat unnecessary to the overall thrust of the narrative, and pad out a 120-minute movie that could have just as easily been 95.
Hampered by a character growth problem, tonal inconsistencies, shoddy mime work, and a collective French accent trainwreck, the film fumbles the few opportunities it does have at something better. Most have seen a superior version of this movie before, featuring leads better cast than this one that also moves with more fluidity than “Resistance” can manage. Although it might not have been good advice for the kid characters in the picture, most everyone else can stay in hiding for this one. [D]