Saint Pauly

Like a misguided commuter, this was headed in the right direction but made a couple wrong turns. A Radiant Girl is about a 19-year-old Jewish girl in Second World War Paris during the weeks leading up to the deportation of the Jews. Much of what's here works well. I was especially touched by the father-daughter relationship where he, in a sense, does too good a job shielding her from the impending doom. Sandrine Kiberlain (French actress-cum-director) also makes an interesting choice not to make the film too much of an obvious period piece (apart from the clothes, the scenes could be of Paris today) and to use contemporary music. I'm assuming the point behind this is to remind the audience that antisemitism is not a problem regulated to the past, but one we confront still today. While the modern look was initially distracting, the audience soon gets used to it and her point is made. The overall problem with the film, however, is that it doesn't go hard enough. Like the well-intentioned father, Kiberlain does a good job of protecting us from the horrors of the epoch, but is that really a good thing?