Essentially a woman on the prowl; chases down a stud, beds him, calls it love. Then the stud who is in RAF gets shot down; she takes up scheme as foreign agent to rescue her lover. Once assigned she falls in with communist resistance fighters eventually participates with a guy who turns on his own father, supposedly to save his two children, but in fact gets the father, his two children sent off to concentration camps to be gassed, causes the maid to be killed by the butt of a rifle. Our heroine is told stud lover was killed not captured; war ends heroine returns to England, and lo and behold by happenstance runs into her stud lover airman...he's alive... happy ending...nope she is cold as a clam when she meets stud cause she realizes she's in love with communist contact and leaves for France to find new stud who has the blood of his father and children on his hands. Ending? Both low life's deserve each other. Movies ends with a thud. Wasted time.

Charlotte Gray is beautifully filmed, but I found the story somewhat disjointed. She is asked to go to France before her boyfriend is shot down, so her first reason for going is not because she is looking for him. They fall "in love" after a one-night stand? So typical of Hollywood. The man heading the cell in France says he is a Communist; he never says the group is communist. Even so, another incident of Hollywood making the communists look like the good guys, when in fact, Communism is even more harsh than Nazism or Fascism (count the number of people killed by each regime). The dialogue was hard to hear in parts of the movie, as it was too softly spoken (audio editor problem). There are some heart-wrenching scenes and one does get the feel of occupied France. I didn't understand why she had to dye her hair---undercover men do not do so, and it was probably hard to obtain hair color during the war. Then at the end of the movie, her hair is an in-between color: not her normal blonde as in the beginning, nor the dark brunette of her resistance days.

The story of The French Resistance is rarely told. When French cinema did tackle their national shame, the results were oblique, bold, and often the most honest films made about the war. Charlotte Gray is the opposite. It is a dime-store romance novella which uses occupied France as a backdrop. A script and basis which are stultifyingly hypocritical; The heroine (Cate Blanchett) establishing early that the occupation of France is nothing to joke about, then proceeding to trivialise it all in a quest to find her boyfriend. Australian director Gillian Armstrong dispenses with authenticity, and other cumbersome aspects that would hinder her making a popcorn time waster. In other words, she didn't even bother to rent Army of Shadows or Le Corbeau the night before principal photography began.Grey is not a particularly enjoyable chick-flick either. The faults should be bleedin' obvious, but I will outline those of grating annoyance:The Accent ProblemThe story rests on Charlotte being fluent in French. Blanchett was more than willing to learn French for the part, but Armstrong didn't think that a few months of French lessons would be entirely convincing (or had no faith in Blanchett abilities). Her solution? Have Cate speak in a Scotch accent while in England, then affect an English accent while in France. Er... more convincing? Other actors in the French scenes have accents all over the shop, but then why should a film with such a serious subject matter be realistic?The Romance(s)A woman who risks her life, and the lives of others for her own half-baked affair, is a complete flake. Shortly after consummating her relationship with a dashing pilot (whom poses as though for a Biggles cover) he is shot down over enemy territory. The woman embarks on a what would seem like a noble quest to aid The French Resistance, but is actually a way for her to track down her square-jawed love interest. Her bumbling during a first mission gets another woman killed, and doesn't make her at all sympathetic (if all her hypocritical sanctimony at the beginning didn't already). She almost immediately starts peppering a romance with a Frenchman, making the "I will follow you to the ends of the Earth" love between her and Biggles a sad joke. Neither romance is realistic or enjoyable, to the point where you want to see Charlotte lose both.The EndingShe doesn't lose both, in fact despite all her offensive nonsense throughout the film, she finds and rejects Biggles in peace time, in favour of melodramatic Frenchie! A departure from the book, apparently, and every chick-flick ever made. A slap in the face and a waste of time.

I just viewed the excellent movie Charlotte Gray... it was showed on cable immediately after another same period flick ,'Head in the Clouds'. The cinematography , lighting , landscapes were so beautiful and the script just plain awesome. I hate war movies of all types and I was surprised when I didn't snap these two movies off when I saw they were WWII movies. Most of them do absolutely no justice to the horrors and heroism of the personal stories of the people living this nightmare.However, these two movies brought the pain and difficulties of war experienced by our parents into my consciousness in a manner I could really understand. I was transported into the moments of futility of her situation as she became trapped in this particular place in France and the moment when she was told her lover was dead. Charlotte was a patriot and had reached the point where even that failed her and she was able to carry on.. simply because there was nothing else she could do, if she wanted her life and the children to survive.Powerful-powerful movie .. all actors were phenomenal. It brought a tear to my eyes that I had never considered the things my parents experienced when they were living WWII. I wish I had known, I would have cherished their strength and perhaps would have wanted to learn more from them to be a whole human being capable of such an enormous love.I would give anything, to have understood their struggles and to know just how really deep their actions and sacrifices were for the things they were passionate about... their country, freedom, love and family.Thanks to the folks creating this movie - history came to life. No matter that it wasn't totally factual... I imagine the reality was even worst than depicted.