STRAYED
[ 1/2] (two and one-half stars)
On the run from the Nazis.In French, with English subtitles. Running time: 95 minutes. Not rated (violence, sex, nudity). At the Lincoln Plaza and the Quad.
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‘STRAYED” teams one of France’s finest actresses, Emmanuelle Beart, and one of the country’s leading directors, Andre Techine.
The result is, alas, competent but unexceptional.
Beart is Odile, a recently widowed Parisian fleeing the Nazis in June 1940 with her 13-year-old son and 7-year-old daughter.
After losing their car in a bombing raid, the three take refuge in a hastily abandoned country mansion with a well-stocked wine cellar, hoping to escape the war there.
They’re joined by Yvan (Gaspard Ulliel), an enigmatic 17-year-old whose survival skills – he provides a freshly killed rabbit for dinner each day – prove valuable.
Odile at first is wary of the illiterate stranger, but she eventually finds herself sexually drawn to the skinny lad with closely cropped hair, who makes no secret of his lust for the woman old enough to be his mother.
Finally, like animals in heat, they act on their pent-up desire.
Beart – who made a name for herself prancing nude in “Manon of the Spring” in 1986 – delivers a solid performance, as does Ulliel. And Agnes Godard’s camera provides alluring visuals.
But the script – co-written by Techine from a novel called “The Boy With Gray Eyes” – is strangely uninvolving and not up to the standards of, say, his “Wild Reeds.”
You never really give a damn about these four lost souls. Despite its technical skills, “Strayed” proves emotionally hollow.