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Like a series of Monet paintings come to life, the historical drama “The Guardians” luxuriates in lush, widescreen images of the French countryside. World War I is raging elsewhere, but this segment of the country remains unspoiled and fertile—thanks to the hard work of the women who’ve been left behind to manage the family farm while their husbands, brothers and sons are off fighting, and sometimes not coming back.

Director and co-writer Xavier Beauvois takes his time introducing us to this place and these people. His pace is unhurried, allowing us to breathe in and appreciate the beauty of the painterly light as it bathes the trees, wheat fields and hillsides in a colorful glow (the work of cinematographer Caroline Champetier , who also shot “ Holy Motors ” and Beauvois’ “ Of Gods and Men ”). We catch a glimpse of the horrors of war at the very beginning as he pans silently across a battlefield, with lifeless bodies strewn about in the mist. But Beauvois is far more interested in how the loved ones of those men struggle to continue living. He has made an intimate epic, as contradictory as that sounds.

The director, who currently has a juicy supporting role as Juliette Binoche ’s arrogant, married lover in “ Let the Sunshine In ,” is far more respectful and appreciative here of the many crucial roles women play. And in Nathalie Baye , Laura Smet and newcomer Iris Bry , he has three very different actresses through whom to explore the film’s themes. (Beauvois wrote the script with Marie-Julie Maille and Frederique Moreau, based on Ernest Perochon ’s 1924 novel “Les Guardiennes.”)

Part of the allure of “The Guardians” comes from the casting: The radiant, real-life mother and daughter Baye and Smet play mother and daughter Hortense and Solange. The year is 1915, and both of Hortense’s sons have been away at war, as has Solange’s husband. All three men come and go over the course of the film, but the ladies require more consistent help year-round, with dreams of modernizing their operation looming wistfully in the distance. (This may be a spoiler, but you’ll never see another movie featuring not one but two scenes of characters reacting joyfully to the arrival of a tractor.)

They get some much-needed assistance when the bank in the nearby village sends them 20-year-old farm laborer Francine (Bry) instead of the loan they’d sought to buy new equipment. With her blazing red hair and milky, fair skin against a backdrop of the farmhouse’s bright blue door, Francine stands out from the moment she arrives, and she’ll eventually serve as the catalyst that shakes things up for the whole family. (You could think of “The Guardians” as a really sad, really slow version of “Tully.”)

Francine takes her cues from the steely Hortense: milking the cows in the morning, harvesting wheat in the afternoon and casting seeds about at dusk. When winter comes, she splits logs in the blindingly sunlit snow. Beauvois lingers over the minutiae of these moments, allowing us to focus on the arduousness and monotony of the tasks, with the sounds of the work creating a rhythm. If you’re interested in movies about process, or people doing their jobs well, you’ll be enthralled.

When the men do return on leave for brief periods, they don’t speak of the violence they’ve endured, but they’re clearly changed. “The Germans are people like us,” Solange’s husband, Clovis ( Olivier Rabourdin ), informs his family over dinner—teachers and farmers like them.

But the more dramatic shift in the film occurs with the return of Hortense’s hunky, flirty son Georges ( Cyril Descours ), who takes an instant interest in Francine. Quiet but confident, she initially won’t succumb to his advances, even though he’s using every trick in the book to seduce her: “I’m leaving  tomorrow . I may not come back.”

A romance eventually blossoms between Francine and Georges, though, as the years pass. (The title card for 1917 is especially striking with its purple, misty sense of melancholy.) And the melodrama that ultimately accompanies it becomes the film’s downfall. While it’s fascinating to watch Francine as she ages and claims her feminine strength, the flimsy misunderstandings and hurt feelings that come to characterize her—and her relationship with Georges—grow tedious. Along those lines, a slow-motion nightmare of war violence that plagues Georges in his sleep feels out of place compared to the understated calm that marks the rest of the film.

Still, “The Guardians” maintains an underlying focus on humanity, in all its complications during a time of great distress. You think people are deeply decent but then they completely botch the handling of something important. Everyone is damaged and the rules no longer apply. That messiness is interesting.

And Bry has a consistently beguiling screen presence. With expressive looks reminiscent of a silent film star, she has a clarity and a directness about her that are hugely appealing. You know her character will find her way in the world, even when the film loses its own.

Christy Lemire

Christy Lemire is a longtime film critic who has written for RogerEbert.com since 2013. Before that, she was the film critic for The Associated Press for nearly 15 years and co-hosted the public television series "Ebert Presents At the Movies" opposite Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, with Roger Ebert serving as managing editor. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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Film credits.

The Guardians (2018)

Rated R for some violence and sexuality.

138 minutes

Nathalie Baye as Hortense

Laura Smet as Solange

Iris Bry as Francine

Olivier Rabourdin as Clovis

Cyril Descours as Georges

Gilbert Bonneau as Henri

Nicolas Giraud as Constant Sandrail

Mathilde Viseux as Marguerite

• Xavier Beauvois

Writer (novel)

• Ernest Perochon
• Marie-Julie Maille
• Frédérique Moreau

Cinematographer

• Caroline Champetier
• Michel Legrand

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REVIEW: “The Guardians” (2018)

As Frenchmen fought on the blood-soaked battlefields of World War I women were often left to maintain their family’s farm and ultimately their livelihood. To do so required backbreaking work tending to cattle, plowing fields and harvesting crops. “The Guardians” is a female-driven French drama offering a fresh wartime story of one such family.

Writer/director Xavier Beauvois highlights the strength and fortitude of a group of women toiling over their family’s farmland from 1915 to 1920. Renowned French actress Nathalie Baye plays Hortense. She’s the matriarch, fearing for her two sons and son-in-law on the battlefront but suppressing her concerns through arduous farm work. By her side is her daughter Solange played by Baye’s real-life daughter Laura Smet.

With the harvest season approaching Hortense and Solange search their local village for a farmhand. The only person they manage to find is 20-year-old Francine (earnestly played by newcomer Iris Bry). She’s quiet and unassuming but a capable and hard-working young woman looking for a semblance of ‘home’. Francine settles in and quickly earns the trust of her employers.

Beauvois puts an emphasis on the labor and the quiet determination with which these women work. This is one of several places where the period detail shines. Every chore, every tool, every technique looks and feels of its time. The same could be said with the way Beauvois visualizes the rural French countryside. Resembling Impressionistic brushstrokes he captures one stunning image after another. Yet despite the portrait-like beauty, there is still no doubt that it is a rugged land.

At first their strenuous day-to-day routine is only interrupted when one of the boys return on furlough. While the brief reunions are joyous, the scars of war are evident and each man has been changed by it. The effects begin to linger even after the men head back to the front making things tougher for Hortense, Solange, and even Francine, with everyone embracing the idea that “everything will be better after the war” but slowing losing their faith in those words.

The slow observant rhythms of “The Guardians” may catch some viewers off guard but hats off to Beauvois for not cutting corners throughout his 140 minutes. Based on Ernest Pérochon’s 1924 novel, the film is a canvas rich with painterly beauty thanks to cinematographer Caroline Champetier. It’s also a stirring World War I era story bathed in humanity and told through great performances, emotive faces and quiet communication. And then there is the subtly tragic story of Francine – the beating heart of the film and proof of an emotional narrative punch that may not be noticeable at first glance.

VERDICT – 4.5 STARS

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4 thoughts on “ review: “the guardians” (2018) ”.

Sounds a great story, really well made.

Oh I so loved this movie. I’m not hearing anyone talk about it but it’s one of my favorites of the year. Hopefully more people will give it a look.

Adding to my watchlist. Merci!

Fantastic to hear! Would love more people to see this.

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The guardian, common sense media reviewers.

Waterlogged rescue flick is too intense for kids.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

An arrogant young swimmer learns to support his te

Several violent storms at sea; flashbacks show the

A fairly young couple engages in sexual activity,

One "f--k" several other profanities (&q

Wild Turkey liquor bottle is visible.

Characters drink in bars to get drunk; some vomiti

Parents need to know that this action drama includes several harrowing scenes of storms and sinking boats at sea. Rescue swimmers valiantly try to save victims, but some deaths occur on screen (not bloody, but sad and -- in one case -- quite disturbing). Kids with fears about water should probably see something else…

Positive Messages

An arrogant young swimmer learns to support his team and make hard choices in rescue situations; a lonely veteran swimmer trains youngsters to take up his heroic legacy.

Violence & Scariness

Several violent storms at sea; flashbacks show the dangers of Coast Guard rescue-swimming; a rescuer has to punch a hysterical victim; a couple of rescuers die; a helicopter crashes and explodes; a trainer is punched in the nose and bleeds; a couple of barfights with Navy sailors leave Jake (and then Ben) bloodied and bruised; training is hard (in freezing water, holding breath, swimming to the point of exhaustion).

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

A fairly young couple engages in sexual activity, including passionate kisses and some playful rolling in bed, wearing underwear and mostly under the covers.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

One "f--k" several other profanities ("damn," "s--t," "a--hole," etc.).

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Drinking, drugs & smoking.

Characters drink in bars to get drunk; some vomiting; Ben chews Vicodins to kill physical and emotional pain; some cigarette smoking.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that this action drama includes several harrowing scenes of storms and sinking boats at sea. Rescue swimmers valiantly try to save victims, but some deaths occur on screen (not bloody, but sad and -- in one case -- quite disturbing). Kids with fears about water should probably see something else. Sailors and swimmers argue and draw blood in fistfights. A couple falls in love and is shown kissing and in bed (no explicit sex, but tumbling under blankets and some underwear shots). Protagonists drink, take painkillers, and use occasional profanity. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

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Community Reviews

• Parents say (2)
• Kids say (7)

Based on 2 parent reviews

Its okay to let other people in

Another great movie, what's the story.

Kevin Costner stars as Ben Randall, a veteran Coast Guard rescue swimmer who turns to teaching after a traumatic event leaves him unable to carry on as usual. Ben needs to recover his nerve, while cocky student Jake ( Ashton Kutcher ) learn to play nicely with others, including his girlfriend, Emily (Melissa Sagemiller). Both teacher and student have suffered; the revelations of that suffering lead each to his own sort of manly re-commitment. At the rescue-swimming training facility, Ben's red-lit nightmares are compounded by the fact that his long-suffering wife, Helen (Sela Ward), has left him. He self-medicates and grumps at the recruits, and for 18 weeks, drills his trainees hard. Ben's methods occasionally alarm and annoy his fellow instructors, including resentful second-in-command Jack (Neal McDonough) and skeptical presiding officer Larson (John Heard). During his down time, Ben calls Helen to beg forgiveness and helps Jake avenge a beating he received from disdainful Navy sailors. Though the trainees' ranks do include a woman, the focus here is on boys learning to be men. Ben and Jake see themselves in each other, pretty much to the exclusion of anyone else. When Emily suggests to Jake that Ben may be "trying to push you to be better," Jake sets her straight: "He knows I'm better than he is!"

Is It Any Good?

With a retread plot, plenty of boy-bonding action, and a shirtless Ashton Kutcher, this is a by-the-numbers crowd pleaser that's about as dull as a heroic redemption story could be.

Per formula, parallel redemption stories grant "emotional" moments to both Ben and Kutcher's Jake. By the time Jake has his big breakdown scene (he cries, though he doesn't actually say, "I got nowhere else to go!"), it's clear that, for all their earnest, actorly efforts, neither man has a chance against Ron L. Brinkerhoff's hackneyed script.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about ways to deal with trauma. How does the movie make the case that focusing on the future (in the form of students to be taught and lives to be saved) helps Ben overcome his guilt, anger, and frustration? What are other ways -- both successful and unsuccessful -- that people deal with traumatic events? How do Ben and Jake's similarities (ambition, competitiveness, tragic pasts) make them ideal partners? What other movies have used a similar structure (tough veteran mentors young hot shot)? Families can also discuss the work of the Coast Guard, including the unit's heroic rescues on the Gulf Coast following Hurricane Katrina.

Movie Details

• In theaters : September 28, 2006
• On DVD or streaming : January 23, 2007
• Cast : Ashton Kutcher , Kevin Costner , Melissa Sagemiller
• Director : Andrew Davis
• Studio : Buena Vista
• Genre : Action/Adventure
• Run time : 136 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : for intense sequences of action/peril, brief strong language and some sensuality.
• Last updated : November 16, 2023

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Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners.

Best films of 2018 so far

The very best of 2018, from Black Panther rewriting the rules for superheroes, Gary Oldman going to war as Churchill, and Maxine Peake blazing her way through 70s sexism

All the Money in the World

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What we said: With the help of Plummer’s tremendous villain-autocrat performance, Ridley Scott gives us a very entertaining parable about money and what it can’t buy.

Read the full review.

Archive-clip documentary by Paul Wright examining Britain’s relationship with the countryside, ranging from traditional customs to darker notes of disease and death.

What we said: A rhapsody-montage of archive clips, flickering evocations of bucolic calm, bizarre eccentricity and what looks like real-life folk horror paganism, coming at you with Pathe newsreel voices and spoken arias of agony and ecstasy, all compiled into a mysterious, extended hallucination.

• Avengers: Infinity War

Third in the powerhouse Marvel series, bringing together a whole gallery of comic-book characters including Doctor Stranger, Iron Man and Black Panther for an epic showdown with supervillain Thanos.

What we said: Colossal, cataclysmic, delirious, preposterous – and always surreally entertaining in the now well-established Marvel movie tradition.

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Eighties-set account of the Act-Up protest movement in France, which took on the medical and political establishment over the Aids crisis with guerrilla campaigns and direct action.

What we said: A passionately acted ensemble movie… [that] compellingly combines elegy, tragedy, urgency and a defiant euphoria.

Creepy, Jersey-set thriller starring Johnny Flynn as a poacher who may or may not be a serial murderer and Jessie Buckley as the unhappy young woman who falls in love with him.

What we said: Beast is a title which might appear to promise horror or melodrama and there is a little of both. But there is always something subtler going on.

• Black Panther

Director Ryan Coogler’s film adaptation of Marvel’s comic book seamlessly combines action-adventure and superhero fantasy with questions of racial discrimination and power.

What we said: The intriguing thing about Black Panther is that it doesn’t look like a superhero film – more a wide-eyed fantasy romance: exciting, subversive and funny.

Pitch Perfect writer Kay Cannon makes her directorial debut with this hugely entertaining comedy. Its simple premise – three sets of parents frantically attempt to stop their children having sex on prom night – is undeniably compelling. Here is a “cock-block” like never seen before.

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Brad’s Status

Ben Stiller takes the lead in this light comedy, playing a down-trodden middle-aged man facing an existential crisis. Racked with envy of those of his friends who have made it, Brad must now also accept that his son Troy’s potential looks just as likely to eclipse his own.

What we said: Brad’s Status is an introspective and downbeat film, but forceful and personal, with excruciating and all-too-real moments of mortification. And it can be weirdly moving, almost out of nowhere.

The Ciambra

Neorealist-style drama about a Roma community in Calabria acted by non-professionals, focussing on the teenage Pio who has to step up as breadwinner after his father and brother go to prison.

What we said: There is something euphoric, but also sad, about watching an unschooled performer dominate through some mysterious and serendipitous rightness.

Pixar ’s animated film is about a young boy who wants to become a musician – against the wishes of his family who want him to be a shoe-maker. Extending to the Land of the Dead, Coco touches on age-old questions of memory, mortality, family and oblivion.

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The second of the year’s two biopics of Donald Crowhurst, who faked his progress in a 1968 round-the-world yachting race. It is a powerful rendering of Crowhurst’s experience: a psychological thriller whose merit lies in its detail.

What we said: Justin Salinger is absolutely superb in the lead role, heart-wrenchingly convincing as the decent British chap who wears pyjamas as he goes to bed on board his boat every night: thin, clenched, wiry, doggedly making the best of it.

Award-winning French drama from Xavier Legrand, exploring divorce, familial ties and psychological abuse. It is both hard-hitting and minimalistic, with stellar performances from Denis Ménochet and Thomas Gioria as a father and his 11-year-old son.

What we said: There is not much storytelling light and shade in Custody, but it has the shock and swipe of real life”

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Rousing biopic of Winston Churchill during his wartime greatness, with Gary Oldman on Oscar-winning form as the statesman struggling with appeasers and the Nazi threat.

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• A Fantastic Woman

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Maxine Peake stars and produces this savagely comic portrait of a female standup comedian fighting her way through the sexist comedy-club circuit in the 70s.

What we said: Peake gives it a fierce, blazing energy and holds everything together through the magnetic force of her performance.

A Gentle Creature

Nightmarish Russian parable about a woman attempting to locate her husband, apparently in a Siberian prison, through a fug of bureaucratic delay and deflection. In the Fog’s Sergei Loznitsa directs.

What we said: A brutally realist movie – at least at first – that takes its heroine on a pilgrimage into the vast, trackless forest of national suffering.

The Happy Prince

Biopic of Oscar Wilde, directed by and starring Rupert Everett, focussing on the final months of the outcast writer’s life in exile as he attempts to recover after his traumatic spell in jail.

What we said: Everett takes us through the moment-by-moment horror of humiliation and poverty, which Wilde brazens out with gallows humour and wit as best he can.

Thoroughly creepy haunted-house horror in which Toni Collette plays an artist and mother whose daughter Charlie is the focus for her recently-deceased mother’s ghost.

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Mockumentary-style biopic tells the story of the infamous skating rivalry between Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan: replete with modern-day interviews, voiceovers and asides, it is a raw investigation into a life torn apart by scandal.

What we said: Margot Robbie gives a fantastically uninhibited performance as Tonya – frizzy of hair, angry of demeanour, she often brings out a raptor grimace on the ice, denoting pain or gloating triumph.

Isle of Dogs

Wes Anderson fable set in a dystopian Japan many years in the future, when all dogs have been banished to an offshore island. Twelve-year-old Atari (voiced by Koyu Rankin) goes in search of his beloved dog, Spots.

What we said: Isle of Dogs is another utterly distinctive, formally brilliant exercise in savant innocence from Anderson, somewhere between arch naivety and inspired sophistication.

Journey’s End

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Mother-daughter relationships, teenage identity, classroom politics – there is something for everyone in Greta Gerwig’s growing-up drama. An evocative performance by Saoirse Ronan as Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson.

What we said: Greta Gerwig’s feature debut as a writer-director is a gloriously funny and wistfully autobiographical coming-of-age comedy.

Lean on Pete

Andrew Haigh follows 45 Years with this moving portrayal of two runaways: teenage Charlie (played by Charlie Plummer) and the titular racehorse. Slow-paced yet saturated with a natural dignity.

What we said: Haigh has a masterly way with mood and moment, with the play of light on a scene, and with a robust shift from fierce sunshine to sombre night-time.

Leave No Trace

Ben Foster and Thomasin McKenzie are superb as a father and daughter who are living off-grid in an Oregon national park, in an outstanding study of familial relationships by Debra “Winter’s Bone” Granik.

What we said: The intimacy and love between Will and Tom is presented with real delicacy. It’s a movie that will live with me for a long time.

Let the Sunshine In

Claire Denis creates a superb role for Juliette Binoche as a divorced artist uncertain of her emotional path as she progresses through a number of short affairs and agonised discussions about romance.

What we said: An elegant, eccentric relationship comedy of ideas, highly rarefied and possessed of an almost inscrutable sophistication.

Love, Simon

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What we said: With its sheer warmth, openness, likability and idealism, Love, Simon won me over. It takes all the corniness and tweeness of the coming-of-age genre and transplants new heart into it.

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My Friend Dahmer

Creepy, unsettling account of the mass killer’s time at high school, adapted from the autobiographical graphic novel by John “Derf” Backderf, in which Dahmer’s teenage strangeness was clear – but perhaps not the direction it would evolve in.

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Steven Spielberg’s high-minded account of whistleblowing in the Watergate era, after the Washington Post agonised over the publication of the Pentagon Papers.

What we said: The film is a pointed celebration of liberal decency in the past and implied present ... Lincoln-Memorial-level rebukes to today’s various squalid declines in Washington and Hollywood.

A Quiet Place

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What we said: This isn’t a young adult drama, it’s a prematurely old adult drama, a world in which innocence, childhood and happiness have been blowtorched off the face of the Earth.

The Rape of Recy Taylor

Nancy Buirski’s documentary broadcasts the extraordinary story of Taylor’s rape by six white teenagers in her Alabama hometown in 1944, and the failure to render her any kind of justice. An angry, instructive film

What we said: Buirski’s vigorous and wide-ranging film draws on the various modes of expression and protest that the Recy Taylor case brought into focus: the black-oriented press and the ‘race film’ industry targeted at black audiences.

The Shape of Water

Multi-Oscar-winning fantasy by Guillermo del Toro, in which Sally Hawkins plays a mute woman who falls in love with an amphibious creature held in a military research facility where she is a cleaner.

What we said: A visually ravishing fantasy romance that almost drowns in its own gorgeousness. It is a Beauty and the Beast fable where both get to be beautiful and neither has to be beastly.

Sicario 2: Soldado

Sequel to the Denis Villeneuve cross-border narco terror thriller, this has Josh Brolin and Benicio del Toro teaming up again to combat the cartels’ plans to smuggle Isis bombers across the border.

What we said: This delivers a coolly targeted payload of brutality, launched from a cauldron of male aggression and international politics.

Solo: A Star Wars Story

Despite its ambivalent reception at the box office, this Han Solo origin story is an enjoyable run-through of Solo’s first meeting with Chewbacca, his acquisition of the Millennium Falcon and his brush with the rebels who are trying to weaken the Empire.

What we said: Solo: A Star Wars Story has a glorious origin myth meet-cute to set up one of cinema’s greatest bromances: the stoic wookiee Chewbacca and the insolently handsome freebooting rebel pilot Han Solo – and Alden Ehrenreich absolutely crushes the role to powder.

Performance art or artistic performance? In Ruben Östlund’s Palme d’Or-winning satire, art museum director Christian’s mobile phone is stolen, triggering a series of bizarre events. In the process, experience is brought dangerously close to social experiment.

What we said: This movie really brings some gobsmackingly weird and outrageous spectacle, with moments of pure showstopping freakiness.

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The Guardian Reviews

The Guardian is a sterling example of a story that tells instead of shows. It expects us to intuit the world's lore and glean the characters' personalities and backstories from what little information is provided.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10 | Jul 30, 2018

The Guardians (I) (2018)

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The Guardians

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Release date

17 th August 2018

The Guardians is what some might call a “slow burner”, but it is one that draws in viewers with beautiful imagery, character depictions and emotion. This French masterpiece from renowned filmmaker Xavier Beauvois is certainly one of 2018’s must-watch movies. 

The film follows Hortense Sandrail and her family in the midst of World War One. Whilst her sons and son-in-law leave home to fight on the frontline, Hortense and her daughter Solange (played by real-life mother and daughter Nathalie Baye and Laura Smet) take on the running of the Paridier Farm. With harvest on the horizon, the protagonist employs the help of a young woman, Francine, who fits straight into farm life and works hard with great respect for her job. When Georges – one of the Sandrail sons – comes home on leave and American soldiers set up camp on the farm, things start to become complicated and relationships are put to the test. 

This feature perfectly portrays the trials of home and work life whilst battles are being fought elsewhere. As WW1 rages on, those left at home try to focus on managing rural life. This becomes more difficult throughout the years and unwanted dramas inevitably hit the quiet farm. As the piece twists and turns, viewers experience a level of uncertainty and tension that the characters themselves are forced to live with for many years. 

The wonderful cast – which also includes Iris Bry, Cyril Descours and Olivier Rabourdin – bring each individual to life and captivate the audience with their grit, determination, doubts and emotion. Along with stunning rural scenery depicted in all seasons and simple yet poetic descriptions of wartime life, Beauvois’ latest release is a beautiful snapshot of families and friends trying to get by in desperate times. 

If you’re yet to watch one of 2018’s amazing selection of foreign language films, then be sure to start with  The Guardians.   

Laura Ewing

The Guardians is released in select cinemas on 17 th August 2018.

Watch the trailer for The Guardians here:

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Film Review: ‘The Guardians’

'Of Gods and Men' director Xavier Beauvois recounts a seldom-told chapter of WWI history concerning the role women played on the home front.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

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How many films about World War I have omitted female characters, or else relegated them to the margins, reduced to a face in a worn photograph or the scrawl in a tattered love letter? An austere corrective to more than a century of under-representation, “The Guardians” tells the other side of the story, focusing on the home front and the women — characters so often defined in relation to male soldiers, as mothers, wives, girlfriends, and children — who shouldered the burden of keeping French farms running while the men were away.

Inspired by prize-winning French author Ernest Pérochon’s 1924 novel, director Xavier Beauvois ’ emotionally devastating adaptation — which some may find as arduous as the wartime chapter it depicts — dispenses with a fair amount of the suffering to be found in the book, forgoing the contemporary tendency toward gritty, handheld realism in favor of a more timeless, almost painterly aesthetic. Set in the Limousin region of France, the decidedly unmanipulative drama features virtually no score (despite a music credit to Michel Legrand) or invasive camera tricks, relying mainly on a fine cast and the work of DP Caroline Champetier, whose stately widescreen compositions supply historically accurate tableaux that have largely been missing from the canonical visual record of that era.

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The opening image, following an almost hallucinatory view of fallen soldiers in gas masks, is that of actress Nathalie Baye , guiding a horse-drawn plow through thick mud. It’s a startling sight, radically different from the liberated modern roles in which Baye previously appeared (in films like “Le petit lieutenant” and “Venus Beauty Institute”), but more important, a sharp contrast with the bucolic picture of French farm life most people hold in their heads — one in which stout men do such work seated atop tractors on sunny days.

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Beneath a wiry gray wig and wardrobe of coarse, handmade clothes, Baye projects a spirit of duty-bound diligence as Hortense, the hardy matriarch of a traditional country farm at a time before heavy machinery made such labor less physically demanding (later, in a scene straight out of a Jean-François Millet painting, women cut the wheat by hand). Because the farm is too much for Hortense and distressed daughter Solange (played by Baye’s real-life daughter, Laura Smet) to manage on their own, Hortense hires a 20-year-old orphan named Francine (Iris Bry) to pitch in.

Compared with Solange, a restless wildflower who doesn’t know what to do with the time spent apart from her husband (one moment she behaves like a woman in mourning, the next she is caught flirting with the G.I.s who’ve set up camp nearby), Francine keeps a low profile. She tends to the animals, mends clothes, and pulls her weight without complaint. She may as well be invisible, which makes her more surprised than anyone when Hortense’s son Clovis (Oliver Rabourdin) takes notice of her while home on leave — which only serves to complicate the dynamic between the women, since Francine is not of their class. It helps the film’s cause that Bry has never acted on-screen before, allowing audiences to discover the young woman in the role — and indeed, she seems to blossom before our eyes as tragedy lends dimension to her character.

Assuming a somewhat tedious yet period-appropriate sense of pace, “The Guardians” spans nearly five years from 1915-20 — a time when sentiments were expressed at length, and by letter, before television and mass media penetrated rural homes, when daylight hours were spent either in work or in worship (Beauvois depicts the church as a place of somber solidarity with the other townfolk). Presented with the slow-motion rhythm of life on a farm, Beauvois and editor-co-writer Marie-Julie Maille do a remarkable job of compression, depicting the demanding routine without insisting on re-creating it in real time, the way directors like Béla Tarr or Chantal Akerman might have.

Despite being helmed by a man, “The Guardians” should also be viewed as a female-driven achievement, representing the culmination of a long, personal journey for risk-taking French producer Sylvie Pialat (“Stranger by the Lake,” “Our Children”). Together with the actress-driven ensemble and woman cinematographer, Pialat has honored an entire category of war heroes whose stories are seldom told. Where America has Rosie the Riveter as its poster girl for the women who pitched in during WW2, France can now point to “The Guardians” with pride.

Reviewed at Toronto Film Festival (Special Presentations), Sept. 11, 2017. (Also in San Francisco, COLCOA film festivals.) MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 134 MIN.

• Production: (France-Switzerland) A Music Box Films (in U.S.), Pathé/Orange Studio (in France) release of a Les Films du Worso presentation of a Les films du Worso, Pathé, France 3 Cinema, Versus Prods., Rita Prods., Orange Studio, KNM, RTS Radio Télévision Suisse production, with the participation of Canal Plus, Ciné Plus, France Télévisions, in association with Cofinova 13, Soficinéma 13, Indéfilms 5, Cinéfeel 3. Producers: Sylvie Pialat, Benoît Quainon. Co-producers: Pauline Gygax, Max Karli.
• Crew: Director: Xavier Beauvois. Screenplay: Beauvois, Frédérique Moreau, Marie-Julie Maille, based on the novel by Ernest Pérochon. Camera (color, widescreen, HD): Caroline Champetier. Editor: Maille. Music: Michel Legrand.
• With: Nathalie Baye, Laura Smet, Iris Bry , Cyril Descours, Gilbert Bonneau, Olivier Rabourdin, Nicolas Giraud, Mathilde Viseux-Ely.

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