'Diplomacy': The World War II tale makes you feel the stakes
Based on the French play by Cyril Gely and directed by Volker聽Schl枚ndorff, 鈥淒iplomacy鈥� is so soundly engineered and acted that it聽doesn鈥檛 seem stagey at all. Essentially a two-character study, it stars聽Niels Arestrup as Dietrich von Choltitz, the German officer charged by聽Hitler with blowing up Paris in the waning days of the war, and Andr茅聽Dussollier as the Swedish consul who engages von Choltitz, encamped聽in the elegant Hotel Meurice on the Rue de Rivoli, in a battle of wits to聽save the city.聽
These two actors previously played these roles on stage, but their performances don鈥檛 have that ossified feeling one often gets in these聽situations. Since we all know that Paris wasn鈥檛 blown to smithereens,聽the tension here is not in the outcome but in how it was achieved. The聽meeting between these two men is largely fictional, but the stakes could聽not have been more real. Grade:聽A- (Unrated.)
