The Round Up Review

If you’re looking for a summer feel-good film, look away now. Still with us? Good. The Round Up is a French language period drama, set in Nazi-occupied Paris in 1942. The fragile peace of the Jewish communities is rocked as the Nazis tighten their grip on Jewish freedoms before arresting over 13,000 people and transporting them to the Vel’ d’Hiv velodrome. There they are cared for by a small number of tireless nurses and Jean Reno’s Jewish doctor, before being moved on to a work camp. We already know all too well what fate awaited them after that.

The film is painstakingly researched from eyewitness accounts and portrays one of the most disturbing and merciless chapters of history. Writer and director Rose Bosch captures the events of the film with a dignified and humane touch. The film is not exploitative and the terrifying subject matter is handled well. She can thank her cast for putting in excellent performances. There are several parts for very young actors who accredit themselves well. Mathieu Di Concerto is especially good – he plays a boy of about three, so he can’t be much older himself – in his portrayal of an orphan who has no idea what is happening. The same character is played by what is presumably the boy’s real life brother, Romain Di Concerto in the epilogue. Though he is still an infant, his innocence is irrecoverably lost.

There are some stunning scenes in the film. The ‘round up’ itself is particularly gripping and the revelation as to the extent of the arrest as the camera pulls out of the velodrome is quietening. The scenes in which French government makes deals with the Nazis over the fates of their own people is particularly horrible too. It’s isn’t all doom and gloom however – there are touching moments as firemen smuggle out secret notes from the captured Jews and Mélanie Laurent (Inglourious Basterds)’s protestant nurse is a source of constant human kindness.

The less well done parts? It’s difficult to criticise a film that attempts to put such a horrific tragedy on screen in such a well-made way. Perhaps the few scenes in which Hitler himself appears were unnecessary – they don’t move the plot forward in any way. It also may have interesting to study the Nazi guards – and French collaborators – more too. I badly wanted to know why and how ordinary people could be brainwashed into treating fellow ordinary humans in such despicable ways; unfortunately this isn’t something the film focuses on. Why didn’t any of them say no? Perhaps there are no simple explanations I guess. The film is first and foremost a historical drama and not a psychological study, after all.

If you’ve any interest at all in the history of the Second World War, or if the treatment of Jews by the Nazis is not something you know too much about, I would whole-heartedly recommend seeking out this film. It is, of course, an event that should never be forgotten and The Round Up is a welcome channel through which people should remember a tragedy.