Strayed

If you prefer more traditional French fare, STRAYED is a terrific movie starring the drop-dead gorgeous Emmanuelle Béart and directed by André Téchiné (Wild Reeds and Alice and Martin). Set in 1940 at the beginning of France’s German occupation, STRAYED is the story of the recently widowed Odile (Béart), a young, beautiful mother fleeing Paris with her two children. When German planes bomb the road filled with refugees, their car is destroyed and they flee into the woods. There they encounter Yvan (Gaspard Ulliel), a 17-year-old illiterate delinquent whose survival skills and charm soon prove indispensable. After spending a night in the open, the four fugitives stumble upon an abandoned house and Yvan breaks in. Empty of its inhabitants, the house becomes a desert island paradise and the setting for a makeshift family. Odile, at once suspicious of yet attracted to the mysterious stranger, soon finds herself at the center of a fascinating set of personal and sexual dynamics. Dennis Lim of the The Village Voice: "As with Téchiné's best work, STRAYED is a peculiar, lingering blend of robustness and delicacy -- a movie with hardly a single wasted frame, incongruous word, or false gesture." And Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly: "Beautifully ambiguous, exquisitely underplayed."