In ‘Farewell, Mr. Haffmann,’ survival chafes against an erotic thriller’s contrivances
Robert Abele April 4, 2024
Until The Zone of Interest upended the way of doing things
narratives of complicity
, a commonly flexed method
to World War II of approaching a Holocaust storysurrounding the Holocaust
was to time-capsule its good-vs.-evil realities,
while treating certain
treating
the
scenario
s
as rife with
understandable
complexity.
A Essentially, the movie creates a
that-was-then groundwork laced with doses of
unease. W
hat
–
would
–
you
–
have
–
done?
That classically structured approach history mined for pockets of moral quagmire may
begin to
feel contrived
and distancing
in the wake of
the force disturbance
Zone.
engendered.
But it can still be an effective way to explore dangerous times
,
and the French film Farewell
, Mr.Mister
Haffmann
,
starring Daniel Auteuil as a Parisian Jew
who falls
in
to
a
survival
trap,
is one such engrossing if unwieldy example.
Its 1941
,
and Auteuils Joseph Haffmann is a high-end jeweler who successfully gets his wife and three children out of France, intending to join them after staying a little longer to set in motion a plan to protect his livelihood.
H The scheme: H
e
lld
sell the shop to his non-Jewish assistant Franois (Gilles Lellouche), who would move into the Haffmanns upstairs apartment with his wife Blanche (Sara Giraudeau) and run the business.
After a time,, after which
Joseph would return, re-assume ownership
,
and help Fran
ois, a budding designer, start his own outfit.
Josephs own escape from Paris, however, becomes too risky with
the
increasing Nazi crackdowns, and he finds himself back in the shop, hiding in his own cellar. Franois, a proud man with a bad leg and a chip on his shoulder, whos been keener on this new arrangement than the apprehensive, docile wife with whom hes desperate to start a family, counters with his own condition for his onetime boss, now one more soul in need of protection.
The preposterous, near-farcical offer one act of surrogacy for another sounds like the kind of thing only a screenwriter would come up with,
or in this case,
a
playwright,
since it’s an adaptation ofdirector/co-writer Fred Cavay and Sarah Kaminsky have adapted
Jean-Philippe Daguerres French stage hit.
Franois will shield Joseph if he, in turn, helps his wife conceive.
You can see it appealing to a writers desire for twinning themes, even if it also trivializ
lly juxtapos
es imbalanced vulnerabilities one mans literal survival
vs. against
anothers bruised male ego for the sake of extra tension in a wartime
dramathree-hander
.
But because the movie is anchored by three
more than
capable actors,
and Cavay exhibits a dramatic sense shrewder than what one melodramatic gambit might suggest,
our eye-rolling s
ubsidesettles
quickly enough
so
that the rest of the film can intensify the
more
nerve-jangling consequences of its reversal of fortunes. At the center is Lellouches unflinching, bursting-at-the-seams portrayal of an aggrieved man curdled by ambition,
as
Fran
ois
is
transformed by his unearned bump in status
, means, and responsibility
into a callous collaborator. Auteuil, meanwhile, captures the
conversely
deflating aura of a thoughtful man enduring a misplaced trust that could potentially mean his doom.
The corner mouse, however, is the one to watch:
for.
Giraudeau (the memorable rookie agent from Frances spy series The Bureau) nails the trickiest part,
in that she overcomes that overcoming the
ridiculous narrative device
and an oversold early timidness,
to
become emerge as
the second halfs firmest source of light.
—
Blanches loss of innocence
seeds an interesting tensionand resulting attentiveness believably seedinga much-needed resolve
as the situation comes to a head. That its such an effective performance
given little help in a movie hindered
by an editing style that too often favors
a thrillers
forward motion over quality time with its stricken characters, makes it even more impressive.
In terms of visuals and period trappings, Farewell, M
iste
r. Haffmann isnt much more memorable than an upscale TV movie
, showing fealty to its theatrical origins, in that i
.
I
t may not exhibit the subtle spatial flair
that
great filmmakers have been known to wring from constricted places, but it gets the claustrophobia right. And
also,
thanks to its actors,
a there’s a
credibly heavy sense of the personal prisons within literal ones that only a wretched war can foster.
