Den diskrete hjälten

France towards the end of the Second World War. The young Albert Dehousse lives with his mother and does not really know what to do with his life. His widowed mother claims that her husband died in the First World War - though he has actually drunk himself to death in the bar. On top of which, towards the end of the war it is revealed that she has collaborated with the occupying troops. She is saved by the young Servane, who is married to Albert. But Albert cannot stand the disgrace and runs away to Paris. He becomes a professional liar and humbug. Albert lives in poverty but sees new possibilities when he meets a mysterious hero from tile resistance. Albert decides to become, as it were, a hero from the resistance after the event. He makes a careful study of the prototypes, bluffs his way along and his new heroic identity is accepted. His bluff is successful, Dehousse is awarded the rank of lieutenant-colonel with special missions in occupied Germany. And everything is based on false merits. The film is interesting in several ways. Albert Dehousse is a man lacking in character, more amoral than immoral. Like Woody Allen's Zelig or Peter Sellers' Mr. Chance he is a chameleon who quickly and smoothly adapts to his surroundings. At the same time the film is a moral settling of accounts with the myth of French gloire, French grandeur and Gallic national heroism during the German occupation. Historians have shown that the myths about the French resistance against tile Germans were not as widespread and magnificent as the patriotic rhetoric would suggest. We know now that far more of the French than has previously been admitted willingly collaborated with the Germans and in many cases facilitated the deportation of Jews. The brutal persecution of the collaborators who were exposed at the end of the war was used to hide the bad conscience of the majority. The war years are realIy a sort of no-man's land, where everything is hazy and it is difficult to differentiate between lies and the truth, between friends and foes. Director Jacques Audiard suggests that de Gaulle was the magician who created the illusion about the French resistance and that it ''has taken us forty years to live down and expose that lie''. When Audiard does this in his own way in this film, he has not chosen a moralising, melodramatic settling of accountsbut has instead made a comedy with distancing interludes. A bitter comedy free from illusions but with painful insights into human nature.

Premiärstatus
Skandinavisk premiär: Orig. titel
Un héros très discret: Medverkande
Mathieu Kassovitz, Anouk Grinberg, Sandrine Kiberlain: Producent
Patrick Godeau: Manus
Alain Le Henry & Jacques Audiard: Foto
Jean-Marc Fabre: Musik
Alexandre Desplat: Talat språk
French