Roubaix, northern France: Sandrine, having lost her job then her flat, moves back in with her mother Martine, whose small house is already accommodating Sandrine’s sister Audrey and her family while they build their dream home from scratch. Unable to find new work, Sandrine is offered a lifeline by the only member of the family with money, her uncle Henri. She quickly takes to working in Henri’s kennels, but his business is not as above board as it first seems…
While there is no overt military theme in I AM A SOLDIER — the title comes from a popular song dear to Sandrine’s close-knit family — there is a strong sense of struggle. Martine, desperate to hold onto her job at the local supermarket, allows herself to be humiliated by her younger colleagues and complains at Sandrine’s apparently spendthrift ways, while Audrey’s husband Tony breaks down on the site of his still-unfinished house and wonders why it has to be so difficult to make ends meet. Times are clearly hard all over, and the only people able to make a decent living do so by taking advantage of someone else. In Henri’s case this involves buying puppies cheaply from a shady associate who brings them in from Eastern Europe, paying a compromised vet, Pierre, to fake the puppies’ papers, then selling them on at a large profit.
Like Henri, with whom she forms an intriguing bond, Sandrine is proud and secretive
If Sandrine, suddenly privy to a part of Henri’s life that he successfully hides from the rest of the family, is disgusted by the criminal and exploitative nature of the work, she does not let it show, but then she lets very little show. Like Henri, with whom she forms an intriguing bond, Sandrine is proud and secretive; her emotions build up and are released in sudden and unexpected ways. Early on, in a rare moment of levity (both for the film and for her), Sandrine, exasperated by a prospective employer’s vapid questions, suddenly gets a fit of the giggles. Later, she takes her frustrations out on the dogs at Henri’s kennels, which will have very serious consequences for both of them.
The relationship between Sandrine and Henri is at the heart of the film. He clearly recognises something in her: an inner toughness absent in the other members of the family. If he is never particularly avuncular towards her, he is admirably open and fair, at least at first. But as his lack of sentimentality shades into unscrupulousness, Sandrine uses the very toughness he admires to branch out on her own. Unlike him, she is desperate to escape this life, and is not too squeamish about making it happen.
It is something of a risk for the director and co-writer Laurent Larivière to focus on such unknowable and potentially unlikeable characters, but he is rewarded by excellent work by his two leads. Both Louise Bourgoin as Sandrine and Jean-Hughes Anglade as Henri successfully divest themselves of their customary charm to deliver hard-edged performances, so that it is all the more effective when they do finally reveal a softer side. That said, the film seems to lose its way in its depiction of the growing relationship between Sandrine and the vet Pierre: after the efficiency of the film’s storytelling and the unwavering clarity of its tone, the final scene between them seems dropped in from a romantic comedy.
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOHgZxSKdW0