"Female Agents" from 2007 is the true story of Lise Villameur (here Louise Desfontaines, played by Sophie Marceau), an agent who worked against the Nazis during World War II. There are several films about female World War II spies: Carve Her Name with Pride is one, also a true story and very moving, and the film Odette, also very good.Desfontaines is recruited by her brother Pierre (Julien Boisselier) to find women to help rescue a British geologist from a German hospital. He had been sent to study the soil on the beaches at Normandy in preparation for D-Day and was captured. For the mission, Louise chooses Jeanne (Julie Depardieu), a prostitute who is in prison for murder; an explosives expert Gaëlle Lemenech (Déborah François); and the ex-fiancé of Colonel Karl Heindrich, Suzy Desprez (Marie Gillain). The mission goes off well, but to their consternation, Pierre has another job for them. He needs them to go to Paris to kill Colonel Heindrich who believes the Allies are planning to land in Normandy.Excellent film, suspenseful, gritty, dark, and atmospheric, with wonderful performances by everyone, but especially Marceau, who plays the tough, quick, and enterprising Louise.I'm not sure why this film received a low rating on IMDb, and I also don't know where the bland title came from. I believe "Les femmes de l'ombre" means "Women of the Shadows." There must be something more exciting than "Female Agents."This isn't your typical movie; some of it is hard to watch, but the courage of these women is quite amazing.

It's 1944 London. Louise Desfontaines (Sophie Marceau) and brother Pierre Desfontaines (Julien Boisselier) are part of Special Operations Executive tasked with extracting a British geologist who is testing the beaches of Normandy. They recruit Jeanne Faussier (Julie Depardieu), an imprisoned whore who killed her pimp. They threaten Suzy Desprez (Marie Gillain) who is hiding her past as a dancer and mistress to a Nazi. Gaëlle Lemenech (Déborah François) is a chemical explosive expert bored with being a secretary. Maria Luzzato (Maya Sansa) is an Italian Jewish radio operator. The group go into occupied France to search for the captured geologist. Later, Pierre Desfontaines forces an almost suicidal mission on the women to go to Paris and kill SS Colonel Heindrich who may know too much about Normandy.I like the recruiting and the various female characters. However, the mission strikes me as being very wrong-headed. If they spend so much effort to get the geologist, then it would be essentially the same as a confirmation that Normandy is important. They may as well shine a neon sign on the guy that he's a secret agent. The only realistic plan is to confirm that the geologist is held at the hospital and then bomb the building to smithereens. That way the geologist is killed and it wouldn't be obvious. It would also kill his interrogators. This whole movie feels like a badly conceived Bond movie.

At the time of Female Agent's production, and as a sentiment that has in all fairness hung around through to around about the present, the French were/are probably making the best films of any nation collectively in the world. With this in mind, we do enjoy a good French film; even more so if it's driven by women, because that can be good fun and since a good Second World War film makes for a fair old crack now and again, what's the problem with sitting down for a cut-and-thrust, causality driven World War 2 resistance picture about varying parties darting across occupied Europe? Female Agents ticks all of the above boxes; a pacey, highly enjoyable little yarn which tells a good story in an unabashed fashion whilst shedding light on the tales of those history has, to a fair old few, since forgotten: the woman out of the factory, and on the front-line of war.The film begins with a Bond-inspired pre-credits action sequence; Sophie Marceau, she of once of a Bond role, plays Louise Desfontaines: a woman who's seemingly at the top of her warmongering game in her sniping of an array of German soldiers on a cold, bleak evening illuminated only by that of the light brought about by the crude lamps dotted around this docklands area and the harsh headlamps to that of an array of German vehicles in and around the locale. Working with a few others, and under a high pressure situation as things spiral out of control inducing a gun fight, she manages to resurrect the situation and escape with her life amidst an unholy mess that should have been a mission executed more smoothly. It's 1944, and our Louise is placed at the forefront of a larger, more important mission that she will lead in the field, for which she will require the recruitment of certain others. The crew are a motley, disparate lot; a faction of women of varying ages, backgrounds and views on what constitutes a way of life together for this mission based in northern France. These include the likes of Maria (Sansa), a nurse; Suzy (Gillain), a woman formerly a stage strip tease performer; an explosives expert in Gaëlle (François) and that of Jeanne (Depardieu), who's dragged from prison and is there in the first place on some serious sanctions - she's killed, and she'll be asked to kill again.Once they are rounded up and taken to a British airfield additionally populated by that of the men of the American Air Force, a scene that will no doubt go down like a lead balloon stateside plays out in which a bomber crew make light of the women by wolf whistling as they strut past. Yes, it's in good fun but it is first and foremost director Jean-Paul Salomé highlighting the threat of both objectification and transgression these women face in a film of this nature; here addressing it and, by making us aware of such an item, steadily deviating from what would otherwise be an ill-minded approach to dealing with these women driving a film that will come to be rich in action and the process of placing these women and their bodies on the front-line of warfare. The women have a foil, a Nazi colonel whom is ahead of the game; a man whom manages to make frighteningly accurate predictions on where the imminent Normandy landings will take place. It is in fact a proposal put to an array of German higher-ups in a briefing room; a proposal which is promptly mocked by those within and therefore dismissed. The man is Karl Heindrich (Bleibtreu), and in spite of these disagreements, we sense is unafraid to make swift decisions and as a result of his predictions, must have a fair degree of intuition.Desfontaines and her team's mission goes well, a job in a quaint manor house occupied by the Germans adhering to the Where Eagles Dare ideology of seducing and sneaking your way in but opting to shoot one's way out – blowing the odd thing up in the process not necessarily harming proceedings. Post job, the game changes; and while Salomé's film has been accused of borrowing an awful lot from various war films, The Dirty Dozen in particular, its twist after the opening act has it mostly feel like something in the region of Peckinpah's The Getaway or Frankenheimer's French-set chase thriller Ronin. There are even splashes of Infernal Affairs; the film mutating into a film detailing a Frenchmen in league with the Nazi's discovered by the girls, and consequently forced by the girls, into working with the titular agents as one of their own are simultaneously caught and tortured by the Germans into revealing secrets which could ruin everything.The things about Female Agents we enjoy most lie with its director's ability to get on with proceedings; we enjoy the notion of two distinct factions, each with enough of a force behind them, barging through most of occupied Europe desiring their prize: the general wrongfulness or evilness of the Nazi war-machine under Heindrich chasing that of the empowered women looking to get away, although hang around long enough to save a few of their own, subverting that of, and continuing the sense of this being a crime film-come-'fallout-from-a-heist' movie, Mann's male dominated Heat or De Palma's The Untouchables as a film covering characters trapped in oneupmanship. The film is sharp but tough to watch on the occasions it needs to be; thrilling and exciting, without ever exploiting the warfare as action, when it needs to be and makes for a really decent resistance movie in a recent canon of films that are as such.

Films abound regarding arguably the greatest tragedy of mankind--World War II--and so many focus on the heroic sacrifices of men. What makes "Les Femmes de L'ombre" shine is that it features the typically unsung contributors to the war effort--the heroines who shared the same audacity and love of country and liberty as the men.Aside from its cast of four gorgeous French women (and an equally delightful Italian), it features a simple, but clever agenda--the actions of a cell of saboteurs and assassins working for the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) in occupied France. There are no fantastic stories here--no plots to kill Hitler or to sabotage atomic research. Instead, the story narrows its focus to the extraordinary efforts to keep secret the particulars of the inevitable invasion of the European continent by the Allies. This is no small order, and there is much suffering in keeping what must remain secret.The emotions in the film are well played by the actors and actresses. During the few brutal, but necessary scenes, the cries of anguish and pain are real and powerfully emotive. Louise (Sophie Marceau) is convincing as a vengeful widow who works alongside her dedicated brother, Pierre (Julien Boisselier). Jeanne (Julie Depardieu, daughter of the famous French actor Gerard Depardieu) plays a callous whore motivated at first by remission of her prison sentence, then by money, then by revenge. Gaëlle (Déborah François) portrays the naïve, religious girl who is seemingly the only true French patriot of the group. Maria (Maya Sansa) is a driven, Italian Jew whose family met its fate in a concentration camp. The most reluctant member is the lovely Suzy (Marie Gillain), whose questionable past allied her with the most unlikely of characters, Colonel Heindrich (Moritz Bleibtreu) of the Wehrmacht and the film's major antagonist. Unexpected support comes from local profiteer, Eddy (Vincent Rottiers), whose connection to Colonel Heindrich enables the saboteurs to get close to him to fulfill their mission.If there's a noticeable weakness to the film, it is Bleibtreu cast as a Nazi colonel. He's neither evil nor intimidating. He lacks the sinister persona of Colonel Landa (Christoph Waltz) of "Inglourious Basterds," a decidedly less serious film of the genre. Where Colonel Heindrich should have been clever and cruel, his performance instead is wooden and uninspiring. Bleibtreu may be a little out of his realm in a role so serious.Les Femmes de L'ombre is a solid contribution to the WWII films of the last decade. I hope it inspires more stories of the Resistance to be told with attention to the incredible sacrifices and dedication of normal people confronted with the horrors of Nazism.