A woman meets a soldier while seeing off her
husband (when asked if he is her husband she doesn't answer). They
make love and part without knowing anything about each other except
she is called Clemence. Very soon after at the war front the soldier
is caught in a shell blast. His face is smashed and he has lost part
of his tongue leaving him unable to speak. In the field hospital they
expect him to die, almost hope for it. He is transported in a truck
with others. There is no morphine and two die. When he arrives at the
main hospital even the nurses stare at him but he has a nurse who
while no Juliet Binoche is deeply caring. The doctor is also caring
and respectful and is optimistic about what he can do for him though
the treatment will be 'experimental' and he will be a guinea pig. The
doctor will use bone from dead babies to rebuild his face. Because it
is so early in the war the ward is empty. The nurse gives him a slate
to write on. He is fed through a tube. In a letter to his mother he
tells her he has only injured his collarbone.We see his face only
at the moment he first sees it. In despair after seeing his wounds he
considers suicide.
The hospital slowly fills with other facial injuries.
Even after months in hospital these soldiers don't want to see
anyone even those who have wives. One who does reluctantly agree to
see his wife and children is so upset by their reaction he kills
himself. Eventually the injured become their own support group even
lusting after a beautiful nurse. Then they discover a woman who is
also disfigured (and deaf) and kept isolated from others. There is
only friendship with her though one or two would like more. In fact to
satisfy their sexual frustration they go to a brothel.
After 4 years he agrees to see his sister. A friend, Alain, the
only person who regularly visited is called up and later killed.
Only at the end of the war does he leave the hospital and return to
his family. His mother keeps repeating that she can recognise him
obviously thinking she wouldn't. The woman he had been friends with in
the hospital goes home but is rejected by her brother. She says "The
war will be over when we live normally."
He finds Clemence his original love but she doesn't recognise him.
This is a low key and un-melodramatic treatment which draws you
into the isolated world of these men and woman with their very
particular injuries. It is possibly the best film of its kind
and comparable with Regeneration (1997).
