Product Details

• Actors: Eric Caravaca, Denis Podalydès, Grégori Derangère, Sabine Azéma, André Dussollier
• Directors: François Dupeyron
• Format: PAL
• Subtitles: English
• Region: Region 2 (Read more about DVD formats.)
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• ASIN: B000UXVHNQ
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #640,221 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Please note that this is a PAL, Region 2 DVD and requires PAL or multi-system capable DVD players. It will not play on standard North American DVD players. Please read the item technical description carefully. ----------------------------------- Synopsis: A man who thinks he's found an easy ride through the Army during World War I has his world turned upside down when facial injuries render him unrecognizable in this wartime drama. In the summer of 1914, Adrien Fournier (Eric Caravaca) is an engineer conscripted into the French Army, where he is made a lieutenant and assigned to join a group of soldiers helping to design and build a bridge to move troops near the front lines. While scouting a suitable location for the bridge, Fournier and his fellows are caught in the middle of an attack, and a shell explodes in his face. Fournier survives the attack, but while his limbs and his body suffer only minimal damage, his face is torn to shreds - only landing in the mud prevents him from bleeding to death (the dried muck seals off a number of key blood vessels severed by the blast). It is some time before Fournier can be moved to an Army hospital, and he cannot talk through his ruined mouth, communicating with notes scratched onto a small chalkboard. Fournier finds himself in a special hospital wing for officers who've suffered severe injuries (a relatively comfortable area a good bit different from the crowded and spartan wards for common foot soldiers), and as a dedicated surgeon (Andre Dussollier) struggles to rebuild Fournier's face with the primitive means available to him, the once-handsome engineer ponders an uncertain future. Commiserating with Fournier are Alain (Jean-Michel Portal), his best friend from college; Pierre (Gregori Derangere) and Henri (Denis Podalydes), a pair of fellow officers also suffering facial injuries; and Anais (Sabine Azema), a patient and warm-hearted nurse who brings hope to the hospital's most severely injured men.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Back to life, November 6, 2007

By 

Trevor Willsmer (London, England) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Officer's Ward (Le Chamber des Officiers) [Non-US Format, PAL, Region 2, Import] (DVD)

Based on the award-winning novel by Marc Dugain, La Chambre des Officiers aka The Officers' Ward barely made a ripple outside France, but it's one of the best films about World War One made in recent years despite its young hero Adrien (Eric Caravaca) never even reaching the frontline before he suffers horrify disfiguring injuries. Much of the early part of the film is shot from his point-of-view in his hospital bed, his injuries unseen, avoiding the very worst of his disfigurement while making its severity and his own confusion all too clear: like him, all we see is Sabine Azema's maternal nurse (genuinely rather wonderful in a part that could have been horrendously mawkish), Andre Dussollier's doctor and his immediate surroundings - a closed ward without mirrors...

The First World War saw huge advances in plastic surgery - originally intended for victims of horrifying war wounds rather than for the vanity of those with too much money - and although the film only briefly touches on the fact that enlisted men were not nearly so lucky as those guinea pigs who had the benefit of an officer's rank, it does bring home the forgotten lasting damage war does to its victims. Adrien spends five years having his face only partially reconstructed - longer than the war itself lasts - and the film chronicles his and the other patients in the ward's slow journey back towards hope from suicidal despair as their lives are gradually rebuilt to prepare them for a world where the same people who once cheered them off to war will now turn away at the mere sight of their damaged faces. Yet it's not as bleak as you might think. There's an increasingly healthy sense of black humor among the patients even as they cling on to hollow hopes (in Adrien's case a one-night stand with a woman he met at the train station before shipping out to the front), the film dropping the novel's epilogue following the hero to the end of the Second World War in favor of a final scene not in the book but which is both playful and touching: without spoiling it, it's a moment of pure childlike sentiment that manages to be quietly wonderful without breaking faith with the enormity of the subject matter.

Some have found that the film is tedious, and certainly Francois Dupeyron's film isn't for all tastes: while never overlong, it's a film that takes its time and while never feeling like a chamber piece it's certainly one that concentrates on character over action. The sepia/caramel tint to the Scope photography can be a bit overdone at times as well, but it's a film whose simple human and humane strengths more than compensate for its occasional weaknesses. It's a shame that none of the extras on the French 2-disc edition are included on Optimum's UK DVD, but this is still very worthwhile purchase.