Female Agents (2008)

Female Agents (orig.: Les Femmes de l'ombre) is a French film about female resistance fighters in the Second World War. In 1944 a member of the French Resistance, Louise Desfontaines (Sophie Marceau) flees to London after her husband's summary execution. She is recruited by the Special Operations Executive (SOE). Maurice Buckmaster (Colin David Reese), a British agent, to give her a special assignment -- a British scientist working with weapons research has been captured by Axis forces and is being held in a French hospital. Louise is ordered to put together a team of female resistance fig
hters to find the scientist and smuggle him to safety before he can be forced to tell Nazi intelligence what he knows. Louise's band of heroines includes Gaelle Lemenech (Déborah François), who knows about demolition; Jeanne Faussier (Julie Depardieu), a streetwalker more interested in her own survival than the future of France; Suzy Desprez (Marie Gillain), a nightclub entertainer who was romantically involved with a German officer and Maria Luzzato (Maya Sansa), a Jewish Italian radio operator and and the final member of the team. Womans parachuted into Normandy and mission begins well, but there are soon complications. Their SOE bosses give the women a new, almost suicidal objective: they must move on to Paris to eliminate Colonel Heindrich (Moritz Bleibtreu), the head of Nazi counter-intelligence, who has gleaned too much information about the Landings. They are five ordinary women, destined to become heroines. Female Agents was inspired by the true story of Lise Villameur, who served with French resistance forces during the Second World War.