LIEUTENANT Adrien F had enjoyed his last bedroom tango in Paris, a quickie with Clemency, before going off to fight the Great War.

Alas, the young Engineers officer loses much of his handsome face when a shell explodes in the opening skirmishes, and returns to the outskirts of the French capital for a rather longer stay, five years in fact, in the officers' ward, pleading for Clemency.

Adrien (Eric Caravaca) is so disfigured and mentally scarred, initially he is unable to talk, yet full of suicidal rage at his loss of identity, his pain is assuaged only through the growing camaraderie with fellow injury victims, not least a woman whose inner beauty shines through amid their heroic endurance and valour away from the Front.

Gradually, in this hermetically-sealed ward, his confidence, self-esteem and faith in life and love are re-built, so too his voice and face (through pioneering plastic surgery). This re-birth of body and soul is celebrated with dignity and restraint, quiet humour and humanity by director Francois Dupeyron whose meditative, grace-note film-making is so out of step with mainstream Hollywood, where shock too often is overplayed.

Updated: 09:22 Friday, April 05, 2002