From The Wall Street Journal:
Period films work hard to draw us into their vanished worlds—authentic costumes and props, locations free of cellphone towers or jet trails. In “The Guardians,” an uncommonly beautiful drama by Xavier Beauvois, work itself is a strong part of the fascination.
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The story unfolds at a measured pace in France, during World War I, on a family farm where women are the guardians of the land and its traditions, while men are being slaughtered in insane, incessant conflict. (A few soldiers come back briefly on leave.) What these women do and how they do it— breaking the soil with horse-drawn wooden plows, cutting and baling wheat with sickles, scythes and weathered hands—is photographed by Caroline Champetier as a series of vignettes that might have been created by a gifted painter centuries before.
. . . .
From her first moments on screen, Ms. Bry gives her character a sense of purpose. An orphan with quietly fierce determination, red hair and a forward-looking face—it isn’t the set of her chin but the gleam in her eyes—she is only a hired hand, brought in to augment the workforce by Hortense, the family’s matriarch.
. . . .
Yet Francine is the proto-modern woman of the piece. She is far from the independence she yearns for, but well on her way, despite encountering an injustice that might wreck the life of a less resilient woman.
Link to the rest at The Wall Street Journal
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