Liberté: A Call to Spy (2019)

Directed by Lydia Dean Pilcher (The Talented Mr Ripley) Liberte: A Call To Spy is an interesting depiction of a group of rather heroic women spies during the Second World War.

In 1940 Winston Churchill creates Special Operations Executive ‘SOE’ a spy web with aim to sabotage, subvert and disrupt the NAZI war machine. The chieftain for the organization becomes Jewish Vera Atkins (Stana Katic) who hires an eager American with a wooden leg Virginia Hall (Sarah Megan Thomas) and a Muslim pacifist Noor Inayat Khan (Radhika Apte). A bond is formed and the squad is scattered all over France where the mission is to outsmart the Hitler run Germans.

Sarah Megan Thomas wrote the screenplay for the film, which, unfortunately, feels overloaded, control-lacking and with transitions between scenes incoherent. At the start I thought I liked the camerawork from Robby Baumgartner and Miles Goodall for the many detailed close-ups and lower angle shots but then the feeling of having too many of those was simply overwhelming.

The film is too much of a long shot for a low budget production with confusing locations, continuity issues and a fair bit of tacky acting. This is a B grade movie and it certainly feels this way. The victims in the concentration camp scenes just look far too pretty and in good shape for the conditions they were in. The film’s make up department glossed it over way too far.

If there’s anything uplifting and refreshing about this picture, it must be the performance of Sarah M. Thomas. Throughout most of the film the actress keeps her act in shape, however, some of the sad bits feel overcooked.

The music, soundscapes and sound bites were there somewhere, unnoticeable, flat and uninviting, a bit like the film overall.