Florent-Emilio Siri's 2007 film "L'Ennemi Intime" (The Intimate Enemy) has been referred to by more than one reviewer as "the French 'Platoon.'" While it happens to be an excellent Vietnam film and one of Oliver Stone's best, I wouldn't rate "Platoon" in quite the same historical category as "L'Ennemi Intime."
The main difference? Siri's film is written by French historian and documentary film maker Patrick Rotman, who himself made a three part documentary by the same title in 2002. "L'Ennemi Intime," whether the Siri/Rotman feature film or the Rotman documentary, transports the audience into the hell that was France's war in Algeria from 1954 to Algerian independence in 1962.
For those whose sole reference for cinematic treatment of the Algerian war is the timeless "Battle of Algiers," I highly recommend "L'Ennemi Intime" (for an excellent resume of the Algerian war oeuvre - in French - see DVDtoile.com and this in the Herald Tribune). Siri and Rotman, while trying to make this tough subject accessible to the film-going public, obviously had both education and posterity in mind when they created the film's official website. Few film makers have exhibited such a serious approach to educating their public: there's a teaching guide, bibliography, interactive map, lexicon...
But what about the film, you're asking? Steel yourself for: the aftereffects of napalm (not only used in Vietnam); torture of captured Algerians by French soldiers; collective punishment of civilians by both sides; and the "sourire Kabyle" (throat-slitting by FLN of French soldiers or suspected sympathizers)... It's a tough film, but portrays this "sale guerre" with true attention to historical detail.
The casting is first rate: just compare Rotman's documentary to Siri's film, and you see how much lead actors Benoit Magimel and Albert Dupontel look like the real conscripts sent off to maintain "Algerie Francaise." Fellag (playing, appropriately, a captive FLN "fellagha") and other North African actors have key roles, showing how torn Algerians were between colonial occupiers and guerrillas fighting in the "zone interdite." The location filming in next-door Morocco is an excellent stand-in for Kabylie of 1959; Cesar-nominated cinematographer Gianni Fiore Coltellacci provides haunting images.
The "fog of war" is ever-present; whether on night patrol or scanning the craggy valleys with binoculars by day, no one is ever quite sure whose side the others are on. And as Patrick Rotman shows in his documentary of the same name, "the intimate enemy" is sometimes yourself. How do you go back to life in Swinging Sixties France after you've tortured a prisoner?
Some day, a director might make an "American Ennemi Intime," where the moral fog of the War on Terror catches up with those who carried out - or who ordered - "enhanced interrogation techniques."
Alistair Horne, whose book "A Savage War of Peace" remains the English-language reference on the Algerian war of independence, and has been called "Bush's Favorite Historian," tried to instruct former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on the parallels between Algeria and Iraq after seeing the news from Abu Ghraib. Appropriate in its lack of appreciation for irony, Rumsfeld wrote this back to Horne: "as you well know, we do not believe in torture..."
As the poster for "L'Ennemi Intime" says: "Il n'y a pas pire ennemi que soi-meme" - you're your own worst enemy. We may have to wait a long time for an American equivalent.