For nearly two decades, French director André Téchiné (Wild Reeds, My Favorite Season) has been meticulously constructing a great career out of toothpicks, with each new effort pared down to just the right proportion. Never one for gross provocation or grand artistic statements, Téchiné has an impact that tends to be more personal than global, which speaks not only to an emphasis on character, but to the premium he places on economy and precision over broader agendas or pretenses. Though a minor triumph even by his standards, Strayed moves forward with an absorbing ruthlessness, yet without sacrificing those tiny incidental details that lend it singularity and power.
The image of French families fleeing Paris during the German invasion calls to mind the recent Vichy nostalgia piece Bon Voyage, but the similarities to that bloated entertainment end there. With a simple intertitle to situate viewers in early June 1940, Téchiné immediately plops down into the chaos and fear gripping a slow procession of exiles heading south on a main road, lined up like sitting ducks for the Nazi warplanes screaming overhead. Already coping with her husband's recent death on the front, Emmanuelle Béart shoulders the additional burden of protecting their two children, a self-possessed 13-year-old (Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet) and a 7-year-old innocent (Clémence Meyer). When bombs destroy their car, the three are whisked to safety by Gaspard Ulliel, an illiterate 17-year-old whose survival skills prove invaluable, even if Béart can't bring herself to trust him.
After Béart and company happen upon an abandoned three-story home in the forest, Ulliel sneaks in through a window and cuts the phone line, but it's a credit to Téchiné that this simple act raises many ambiguities: Is Ulliel a threat to the family? Or does he have other reasons for stranding them all in indefinite limbo? The contrast between the educated, civilized Béart and the crude, practical Ulliel is laid a bit too bare, but their strong, opposing wills give their scenes together unique electricity. Both are hiding important truths from themselves, from the kids, and from each other, but their reasons are beautifully elucidated by Téchiné's script, which complicates their motivations and doles out key information in deliberate time. When Béart and Ulliel finally drop their guard and trust each other, the carefully established tensions in Strayed pay off to exhilarating and bittersweet effect.