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ONE DAY YOU'LL UNDERSTAND Send This Review to a Friend
The Toronto International Film Festival is always a treasure trove of possibilities, and one of the substantial films offered in the 2008 edition was “One Day You’ll Understand,” Israeli director Amos Gitaï’s film that explores the residue of the Holocaust. It is a quiet, contemplative, involving drama that touches the emotions even after all these years.
The screenplay, written by Dan Franck based on the autobiography of Jérôme Clément, deals with the reluctance of victims who have in one way or another been affected by the Holocaust to talk abut it, thereby leaving the next generation with unanswered family questions. In this case, in France at the time of the Klaus Barbie trial in 1987, Victor (Hippolyte Girardot) is consumed with questions about his mother Rivka, played by the ever-magnificent French acting icon Jeanne Moreau. Rivka is Jewish, but her late husband, it is revealed, affirmed his Aryan identity during the war, a life-saving step in view of the French deportation of Jews under the Nazi occupation but a blow to his wife.
What really happened during this period? What family secrets may exist?
It is a tribute to the filmmaking of Gitaï that the style of the drama is measured and un-sensational. We follow the path of Victor’s inquiry, how it affects him and the role of his mother. Moreau underplays expertly, and we are drawn into this family story that is emblematic of so many other Holocaust tales probably remaining to be told. A Kino International Release.
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