30 Second Bottom Line: Billed as the story of an ordinary woman in difficult times, this film is more accurately the story of a woman who fits a great many color coordinated suits, makeup, and a hairstylist into her one battered suitcase. Somehow she still expects to go unnoticed in a small village in France while she fights in the underground resistance movement.

Story Line: In wartime England, Charlotte Gray (Cate Blanchette) meets and quickly falls in love with a soldier who is promptly MIA in France in 1942. She is recruited into the resistance and sent to a village in France where she hopes to find news of boyfriend Peter (Rupert Penry-Jones). She becomes melodramatically entangled with French villager and resistance fighter Julian (Billy Crudup); his estranged father (Michael Gambon) an endearing and imperiled Jewish child and assorted villagers, good and evil.

Despite her dubious training in England, Charlotte manages to gain the trust of the resistance fighters but goes suspiciously undetected by the German soldiers. She is suspected however by the stereotypical Vichy collaborator, who will lie for her in exchange for her sexual favors. The plausibility is strained at every turn and in the midst of the dispassionate climax, in which Charlotte is impossibly caught by the Nazis, she inexplicably is safe and sound back in England, where incidentally she runs into forgotten old flame Peter. Much of the plot is one bad cliché after another.

Tell Me More About It: This is a disappointing effort from Gillian Anderson that fails to live up to the novel or the promising promos. In spite of the sincere endeavors of lead actors Blanchette and Gambon, this film is never believable for a moment and we don't much care what happens to any of them, so artificial and lacking in depth are they. There is some lush photography in the English and French countryside, and a core story that has potential but as realized here, it never materializes beyond a disjointed and implausible affectation. Director Gillian Anderson's best efforts to date remain My Brilliant Career and more recently Oscar and Lucinda. Unfortunately, this one feels more like the dismal murky mess that was Mrs. Soffel however much improved by the cinematography.

Charlotte Gray: Cate Blanchette	Levade: Michael Gambon
Julian: Billy Crudup	Peter: Rupert Penry-Jones
Director: Gillian Anderson