And that is, above all else, what The Two of Us is: gentle. It does not, however, take place in a gentle time and place. Rather, the story unfolds during the worst years of World War II, when France is occupied by the Nazis and many Jewish parents feared for their lives and the lives of their children. Because of this, nine-year-old Claude (Alain Cohen), a mischievous little boy who doesn't understand the necessity of keeping a low profile, is sent by his parents to live with an elderly, retired Catholic couple in the countryside. Claude is instructed to act Catholic--he learns to recite the Lord's Prayer, changes his name to the less-Semitic-sounding Longuet, and makes sure that no one seems him bathing lest they notice that he is circumcised.

Claude immediately strikes up a relationship with his new “Grandpa,” who is beautifully played by the veteran French character actor Michel Simon in one of his last performances. He's a shaggy-dog of a man, with a portly gut and unkempt hair, who appreciates Claude's devotion and willingness to listen to him. They play and work together, making games out of chopping wood, and Grandpa allows Claude to listen with him to the wartime propaganda broadcasts on the radio. When Claude has trouble at school, it is into Grandpa's arms he runs crying.

The irony is that Grandpa is resolutely anti-Semitic, and he has no idea that the child with whom he is forging such a strong bond is a Jew. The film is full of such contradictions, and the film's underlying pleasure is the way we can see through those contradictions to the characters' hearts. For example, while Grandpa says terrible, ignorant things about Jews (and about Bolsheviks … and about Freemasons … and about the English), he is also such a caring soul that he refuses to eat meat and feeds his faithful dog at the dinner table as if he were a person, right down to the bib (“A man without a bib loses his dignity,” he declares at one point).

Berri is careful in outlining Grandpa's bigotry, and Simon's nuanced performance shows us that it is a function of ignorance, rather than hatred. In a 1975 interview, Berri said that he was trying to illustrate Sartre's description of anti-Semitism as someone who doesn't like tomatoes, but has never tried one. That does not make the racism any less odious, but it does make it more understandable, especially when Grandpa's conception of Jews is not far removed from Borat's. He genuinely believes he can spot a Jew by the way he or she smells, and the fact that he delivers this declaration in the close presence of a Jewish boy is but one small gem of comedy in a film that constantly walks a tricky balancing act between the funny and the sad, the poignant and the tragic.

The Two of Us takes numerous dramatic risks without every appearing to do so. The relationship between Grandpa and Claude is the film's heart, and yet we're asked to not only sympathize with, but appreciate a man whose intolerance, while not directly harming anyone, is precisely what enabled the Nazis to kill millions of Jews. Grandpa is a grizzled old fool, but it's impossible not to love him because Claude loves him so much. Again, we have risk: Claude could have so easily been one of those insufferable movie moppets, a super-cute child whose innocence is meant to be a beacon of light in a dark world. Instead, Claude is a troubled kid (in the film's very first scene he is caught shoplifting) who finds comfort and peace in unlikely arms, which allows him to ever-so-gently undermine many of Grandpa's most virulent beliefs. When Grandpa explains to him how Jews have hooked noses and curly hair, Claude points out that Grandpa's own nose is rather large and his hair quite wavy, which culminates in Claude accusing him of being a disguised Jew. The performance by Alain Cohen, a first-time actor, is precious without being syrupy, moving without being manipulative.

And that, more than anything, describes The Two of Us as a whole. As a first film, it is superbly accomplished, displaying a confidence in both its own dramatic resonance and the audience's ability to distinguish fine gradations of human behavior without needing anything spelled out. Claude Berri, who found his greatest international success in the 1980s with his 1986 films Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring, based The Two of Us on his own wartime experiences as a child (his real last name, Langmann, is the name that his on-screen surrogate must deny). As a result The Two of Us hums with a sense of both dramatic and comedic authenticity that most films, even those with the greatest of intentions, often lack.

Copyright ©2007 James Kendrick

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