This one is a Dutch film from Paul Verhoeven, a director whose Hollywood films are usually interesting to me and whose aesthetics I tend to like.
This one tells the story of Rachel a Jewish girl living in Holland at the very end of the Second World War. First off we see her in the future alive and well at Israel teaching little children (married with two of her own). The film is a huge flashback. So throughout the adventures we know that she'll survive and to give the director due credit, it doesn't affect the suspense one bit. I was still captivated with the turns of events and appalled by the things our heroine needed to get through.
The first scenes of the flashback tells us that she was separated from her family due to safety reasons and is hiding with a religious family who wanted her to memorise the Bible in order to be able to eat at the table. When she was taking time off by the river she meets a guy on a boat and then planes bomb her house (not the Nazi planes but the Allies who try to fight the Nazis, although why would they want to bomb a farmhouse in the middle of wide fields I have no idea, I know though many stupid things were done on both sides during WWII). So she goes with that guy and hides in their farm. Then a plain clothes police officer comes there and tells them that they need to hide further since Germans investigated the bomb site and found Rachel's passport among the items and identified the boat of the young man there at the time of the bombing. He promises them safe passage to independent zones where many Jewish people meet. But she would need to take all her valuables with her. So she goes to the Notary and withdraws all her money and diamonds left there by her parents. Following the instructins they reach the meeting place with the young men and to her delighted surprise her parents and her brother (who had a surgery of appendicis) are there with all their valuables along with many other wealthy Jewish people. They put them all in a boat and then in the middle of the night the boat is attacked and everyone on it are killed. Rachel dives in the river and hides helplessly watching all her family and fellow pasengers are being murdered. But it was not enough, when she reached the shore she sees to her horror that the Nazi officer had ordered his men to take the bodies and remove all their valuables. He is very happy with tonight's work and is smoking contendedly. This actor was very successful. He was truly disgusting.
The next we see Rachel is when she is being smuggled inside a coffin acting as a corpse to a resistance center. There she is given a new name, Ellis, and is told to die her hair. She does and when asked how far she is willing to go to help the resistance she is willing to go all the way.
Well even the entry section of the film took this long to describe. You'll need to watch and see how Rachel survived many dangers. There is a whodunnit in the film too and I never saw the villain I admit. It was truly the last person I expected.
What I liked best about this film is that it didn't show as all Nazis as evil. And not all the resistance men were noble either. There was good action, lots of suspense, a great female lead and some nudity and violence. I recommend this one if you are interested in that historical period and/or into suspense films.
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