'Resistance' (PG)

 

****

Following the Allies failed attempt to retake Europe on June 6^th 1944, Nazi forces are now sweeping across Britain. In a secluded Welsh valley, a group of farmer’s wives awake to find that their husbands have disappeared without a trace. Not long afterwards, a party of Nazi soldiers arrive in the valley.

This is a very slow and gentle film – nothing, as such, ‘happens’. Indeed, it is more a film about things not happening, but rather waiting for something huge and tumultuous to happen. The farmer’s wives wait for their missing husbands to return, at first waiting for them and then waiting to discover something terrible. At the same time, the small group of Nazi soldiers are waiting for a clue as to where the farmers have fled to, whilst listening out for news of the end of the war. The captain (Tom Wlaschila), however, is also waiting nervously for the arrival of the SS as he has failed to report the missing men for numerous reasons. Over the course of the year in which the soldiers are stationed in the valley, a sense of community blossoms between the abandoned wives and the men. In the middle of this strange new community is the blossoming friendship between the captain and the farmer’s wife, Sarah (Andrea Riseborough). Riseborough and Wlaschila are excellent as two people trying to make sense of their respective traumas, and there is a genuine tenderness and mutual respect between them that is a joy to watch. It is also frustrating, and had me shouting ‘JUST KISS’ at the screen. Wlaschila is a very engaging leading man, and hopefully we will see him in more roles like this. Riseborough is good too, but at times I was so distracted by how thin and ill she looked I just wanted to rush her to hospital.

The events of the present day are interjected with flash-backs to the pre-war existence of the women and their husbands, as well as frequent shots of the harsh and unforgiving Welsh countryside. There are long sections of the film in which there is no conversation between characters, but this only makes the words that are uttered all the more poignant. The sequences that pack the most emotional punch are between the captain and his apparent second in command, who speaks to him about the atrocities he had heard about whilst working in a war hospital, whilst the captain speaks out about protecting the young men in the remainder of his company from any further trauma. There are sections of the film that are underdeveloped, such as the relationship between George (Iwan Rheon) and Tommy (Michael Sheen), but in other places the underdevelopment works well, and only acts as a means of making the audience experience the same unknown as the soldiers and women in the valley.

The ending is perhaps slightly more ambiguous than I would have liked, but this only meant that I spent a long time thinking about what happened to the characters after the screen turned to black. The slow pace of the film certainly allows time for the central characters to get under your skin, and I was left feeling as cold (in a good way!) as the Welsh countryside.