lbailey-38724

I had high hopes for this movie as someone who lives in a village very close to the locale of this story, and also has a deep interest in WW2 Britain and Europe. I am sure that the story of these children is an amazing one, unfortunately the movie seems to gloss over the process of their rehabilitation with a startling vagueness. The first 20 minutes showed promise as we see the children arrive at Windermere, clearly in a state of mental anguish from their experiences. From this point until the end, however, we see a couple of shots of the children having nightmares, playing a game of football and going swimming in the lake and one hour later they seem to be ready to go out in to the world. I can't help but think the true story was much more interesting than this, but that the directors/writers failed to portray it in enough detail. As another reviewer has pointed out, the final 5 minutes were by far the best as we are treated to short interviews with 5 of the surviving children in modern day. To add insult to injury, Romola Garai plays the role of a therapist with one of the most laughably hammy German-English accents that the other actual Germans on set must have found hilarious. What a shame!