We Were One Man

A low-budget but highly acclaimed study of love doubly forbidden by sexual and (because of its World War II setting) national taboos. Valois makes good use of his lonely Landes landscapes and the interestingly contrasted characters: an erratic, mercurial Frenchman; his blond German lover, reserved, slower, almost stolid; and the female figure in the triangle, treated - despite the film's title - with surprising generosity. It's not without its longueurs, nor certain of the clichés (love across the barricades; love among the trees) that often attend this particular mode of the Historical-Pastoral. But there's still a freshness and lyricism in the showing of shared activities (fishing, fighting, felling trees), and a delicacy in indicating how these small epiphanies, moments of elation familiar from many films of 'straight' mateships, can shade imperceptibly into a more overtly erotic passion.