In France after the Second World War, a Jewish Communist (Benoît Magimel) and the beautiful wife he rescued from a death camp (Mélanie Thierry) become citizens and have a daughter, and he opens a clothing store for men. Their serene domesticity is disrupted by a visit from his brother (Nicolas Duvauchelle), long presumed dead and now burdened with secrets which are only slowly revealed. This central storyline is presented via a framing device: four decades later, one of their children is a film director (Sylvie Testud) piecing together the family's complicated past. While presumably at least partly autobiographical on the part of writer and director Diane Kurys, this conceit is more a ponderous literary adornment than a convincing and essential component. It is a flaw in an otherwise handsome and poignant period drama. The performances have nuance and a disarming delicacy even when the characters despair and rage, and the film nicely uses romantic melodrama to expose more uncomfortable and profound veins of anger, cynicism, and regret in postwar Europe.

B+