We Were One Man

CinemaSerfJun 2023

3.0

A young peasant farmer rescues a wounded German soldier towards the end of WWII in rural France. At first they are mutually suspicious of each other, but slowly a bond starts to grow between them and.... Serge Avedikian is convincing as "Guy" - the rather eccentric, shall we say, young Frenchman whom the locals leave to his farm as a bit of a simpleton; Piotr Stanislas as his German friend "Rolf", however, is much less so and therein lies the problem with this story - it just doesn't go anywhere. It doesn't need end to end shagging - indeed there is really only one sexual scene in the performances (asides from Guy's assignations with the local hooker), but the development of their relationship seems to grow in disjointed fits and starts; there is nothing consistent in the way the story progresses. The ending - though touching- makes little, if any, sense. Perhaps 40 years have not helped it, it may well have been much more a remarkable piece of man-to-man cinema in 1979, but now it is just all rather lost, with too much of the dialogue replaced by a rather annoying jaunty score.