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The Review - AT THE MOVIES with DAN CARRIER
Published: 26 June 2008

Girls gunning for Nazis ahead of D-Day

FEMALE AGENTS
Directed by Jean-Paul Salomé
Certificate 18

AT times in this thrilling war film, you can’t help but sit back and be staggered at what a cruel species we can be.
Based on true events, it tells of the work five women Resistance fighters did in laying the ground for the
D-Day invasion.
Starting just days before the armada set out from the south coast of England, we are shown the selfless work of agents in occupied Europe to throw the Nazis off the scent. It ranged from washing a body up on the coast of North Africa of a supposed British officer with secret, bogus invasion documents through to detailed diversionary tactics.
The story starts when we learn that the Allies had sent a geologist to the Normandy shores to take samples of sand, part of intricate preparations so engineers would know exactly what type of ground waited for the landing crafts. But when the geologist is discovered, it sets the Nazis wondering what he was doing there – and whether their belief that the invasion would come from Dover to Calais was flawed.
Now it is a race for a team of female Resistance agents to spring him from the hospital where he is masquerading as an injured German officer before he is discovered and tortured to reveal what he knows.
The cast works: it is a who’s who of leading French actors and tallied with a clever attention to detail, even if at times it seems our heroines are simply staggering from one desperate situation to another.
It reveals just what kind of personal sacrifices were required to win the war.
There are moments when the realism slips away and it turns into a bit of a gung-ho war film, guns blazing in the streets of Paris and a romantic side-story to add to the tension. Still, with super production values, this is a war film with a refreshing lack of macho posturing.

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