An exquisitely touching slice of life set in a Jewish tailor’s workshop in Paris in 1946, “Almost Peaceful” (“Un Monde Pressque Paisible”) is a gem worth seeking out.
Veteran director Michel Deville’s bittersweet movie was released in France in 2002 and played the 2003 San Francisco International Film Festival. But like most French period pieces without stars, the film did not receive U.S. theatrical distribution and is essentially unknown in this country.
Just released on DVD, “Almost Peaceful” is a good film for connoisseurs of subtle character studies and impeccably staged ensemble pieces, as well as those curious about a historical period generally overlooked by French filmmakers. Adapted from Robert Bober’s 1993 autobiographical novel “Quoi de Neuf Sur la Guerre?” (“What News Is the War?”), “Almost Peaceful” is an understated yet bracingly mature film that somehow manages to be ineffably tender and brutally frank at the same time.
The Jews who survived the war have drifted back to their neighborhood — and even their old apartments, in some cases — and are engaged in the awkward and occasionally painful process of rebuilding their lives.
Albert (Simon Abkarian, resembling William Powell with his thin mustache) and his wife, Léa, own a business designing and making dresses, skirts and coats for individual clients and shops. The workshop is located across the hall from their flat, so their small children drop by when they’re not at summer camp.
The staff of male tailors and female finishers is as much an extended family as a group of employees. Although the Holocaust and the war are over, neither is far from anyone’s minds.
Among them, the outspoken Leon was a member of the Resistance and helped hide Albert during the war, while the reserved Charles was deported and lost his wife and kids in the camps. A pair of new hires, a talented young tailor named Maurice and Joseph, a likable apprentice with 10 thumbs, are also alone in the world thanks to the Nazis.
Even the only non-Jew, the lovely Andrée, was scarred: Her younger sister, who fell in love with a German soldier and had his baby, was paraded through the streets of her town after the liberation naked and with her head shaved.
The most haunted character is Sarah, who regularly drops by to sell aromatic soaps or paintings by local artists. She carries her goods in a suitcase, evoking the disturbing image of Jews packed and ready for deportation. She also does a bit of matchmaking, handing pictures to Charles that he instantly and icily returns.
When Leon remarks that her list of potential spouses smells like soap, Sarah retorts, “Was it better when soap smelled of marriageable people?”
“Almost Peaceful” is an elegant mosaic of loneliness and loss, unspoken yearnings and unresolved anger. But if death has cast a cloud over these people, the movie makes the unambiguous case that life is for the living and the only direction is forward.
As befits a story about people who endured enough drama to last a lifetime and merely are seeking a return to normalcy, the film does not build to a dramatic conclusion. It ends instead with a relaxed day in the country at the children’s camp.
“Almost Peaceful” presents various possibilities for healing, but none for forgiveness. After all, what is an appropriate response to betrayal? For Charles, it may mean leaving France and starting over in Canada. For Leon, it’s ensuring the continuation of the Jewish people by having lots of children.
For Joseph, the author’s stand-in, who trades his needles and thread for pen and paper, it is relating this story.
“Almost Peaceful” directed by Michel Deville (94 minutes, Empire Pictures, $26.98).