Features: DVD, English, Subtitled
A year after W.W.I has ended, cynical Major Dellaplane (Philippe Noiret, Cinema Paradiso, The Postman) has the difficult task of identifying and interring thousands of fallen French soldiers anonymously languishing in field hospitals and littering the vast Verdun battlefield. Dellaplane has also become reluctant shepherd to an ad hoc society grown around the legions of widowed wives and mothers combing the French countryside for word of their loved ones. When a buried hospital train yields a fresh source of possibly recognizable bodies, Irene, a haughty Parisian aristocrat and Alice, a hopeful young schoolteacher, form an unlikely alliance with the Major. As the trainÞs surprising cargo is revealed, the three searchers must choose between life in a post-war world stripped of illusions or the seductive self-imprisonment of bitterness and mourning for days, lives and loves gone by.Tavernier regular Noiret won a French Cesar for his performance opposite the "ravishingly gifted actress" (The Washington Post) Sabine Azema>/b> as Irene. In courageously and gracefully celebrating inexhaustible human resilience and burgeoning romance amidst unspeakably appalling loss, Life And Nothing But "conveys both the fragile and the indestructible" (The New York Times).
"...haunting..." Elle
"Eloquent... moving... beautiful." New York Times
"...monumental..." Time
Editor's Note
Two women of differing backgrounds are looking for the missing men they love in the aftermath of World War I. Along the way they encounter two French officers, one detailed to identify the dead and the other assigned to choose a body to be honored as France's unknown soldier.
Plot Summary
Drama about the relationship that develops between two people as they put their lives back together in post-World War I France. Major Dellaplane is a stoic soldier given the unenviable task of locating over 300,000 MIA's. Irene is a snobby socialite trying to find her missing husband, who joined the army to escape their marriage. Their opposing personalities clash at first, but eventually they fall in love with each other.
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