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Elsa Keslassy
International Correspondent
@elsakeslassy See All
Gaumont Half a century after Gaumont delivered France’s first film on Nazi collaboration with Louis Malle’s “Lacombe Lucien,” the studio finds itself at the center of a full-blown national culture war with Xavier Giannoli’s polarizing “Rays and Shadows.”
Tackling the taboo topic of French collaboration with the Nazis during the German occupation of France during WWII, the three-hour, 15-minute period drama has already drawn more than 620,000 moviegoers since its March 18 release; a remarkable performance for a period film of that length in a theatrical landscape that’s typically dominated by U.S. blockbusters, franchises and comedies. But its healthy box office performance has been matched by a fierce critical war that keeps growing nearly three weeks after its theatrical rollout and stretches across newspapers, TV, magazines and social media. The country’s biggest outlets — including Le Monde and Libération — have both published reviews and op-eds laying out the opposing camps.
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