The plight of refugees touches our heart and brings to mind all those terrible moments when we have felt stranded in an alien world with no discernable markers from the past. Refugees exist in a limbo that is neither here nor there. All the old habits and cues for living are thrown out the window in the struggle to just stay alive, find food, and shelter.
In this well-done French film based on a 1983 novel by Gilles Perrault, Odile (Emmaneulle Beart) is a widow fleeing Paris in 1940 in a car with her two children, 13-year-old Philippe (Gregoire Leprince-Ringuet) and 7-year-old Cathy (Clemence Meyer). On the road, the traffic is slowed by thousands of other less fortunate people in horse-drawn carts or bicycles. Everyone is shocked and surprised when German planes fly low and bomb the road killing many helpless civilians. When Philippe flees from the bloody scene, a stranger pulls him down to protect him from the machine gun fire of another plane. In the woods, this young man introduces himself as Yvan (Gaspard Ulliel). He turns out to be illiterate but is quite skilled in the survivor skills needed in the wilderness. Although her children immediately like him, Odile does not trust him. She senses something dangerous about his independence and stubborn willfulness.
The foursome spend one night in the woods, and Yvan then finds a large house that has been abandoned by its owners. He brings them rabbits he has trapped and fish from a stream. But Odile, a school teacher, wants to make sure that he knows she is in charge of what goes on in the house. They disagree vehemently over the weapons he has found on the bodies of slain soldiers. When she buries a gun and grenade in the garden, Yvan is very angry. He refuses to eat with them when two French soldiers show up at the house and are fed by Odile. Convinced that they will rape her, he expresses his feelings to Philippe but to no avail. Her son refuses to tell him exactly where the weapons are hidden in the garden.
Andre Techine (My Favorite Season) directs this slow-paced, character centered drama, doing a superb job conveying the nuances of class differences that separate Odile and the mysterious Yvan, who refuses to talk about his past. When she tries to teach him how to read and write, he breaks down and tells her that he loves her and wants to be her husband. Odile is stunned and unable to respond in any rational way to his outrageous proposal. When she does find a way, the act is one that takes her far away from the prescribed social behavior of her past life. Strayed is a richly developed psychological drama that works with an ending that perfectly matches the chaos and senselessness of war.
