The Children of Chabannes

It's easy to see why there are so many nonfiction films on the Holocaust -- many survivors and their aspiring filmmaker descendants live in this country, it's perhaps the most clear-cut case of evil versus innocence in history, and its powerful subject matter can make a film almost critic-resistant (whether or not it's a good film usually takes a backseat to its good intentions). Thankfully, Chabannes, codirected and edited by Lisa Gossels and Dean Wetherell, uses mostly quality filmmaking to tell a worthy tale. Using her father's life as a jumping-off point, Gossels investigates the story of a boarding school in France's rural Chateau de Chabannes, where many Jewish children were sent from Germany shortly prior to World War II. Most would never see their families again. Unfortunately, France turned out to be less safe than the parents must have hoped, but the majority of the Chabannes children survived, thanks to the determined and eccentric non-Jewish proprietor Felix Chevrier. Chevrier's bizarre hairdo (think a graying Art Garfunkel with mid-afro bald spot) and outspoken manner would seem to make him a good choice for a dramatic feature; it's too bad that the fellow who appears in one or two reenactments here looks nothing like the actual photos of the man. The film has a few unintentional laughs: A historian says that "Chabannes is unique because it is different"; A former teacher notes that the town hasn't changed in 50 years, probably because the people are republicans (that means "liberal" in France, but still); and Gossels' Valley girl-accented narration just seems jarring -- one can't blame people for the way they talk, of course, but her father might have been a better choice for the voice over. Still, when a grown man tells the camera about how he dived into a pool of feces 13 times in order to hide from the daily execution round-up, it's powerful stuff no matter how many times you've listened to memories of similar atrocities.