COME WHAT MAY ANSWERS CRITICS OF ADMITTING SYRIAN REFUGEES
Many politicians question the current policy of admitting Syrians who are fleeing from a brutal civil war. Yet they may have forgotten that the French, expecting the German military to take over northern parts of their country, fled south in droves with no expectation of where they would end up or how they would be able to survive. Come What May (En mai, fais ce qu’il te plait) brings that tragedy to the screen, based on accounts of survivors. To humanize the dramatization, director Christian Carion focuses on two families—the mayor of Pas-de-Calais and his spouse as well as a father and son who had recently escaped from Germany and had been welcomed to live in the same town. After the townspeople leave their homes, German airplanes quickly overfly them, dropping bombs, and German tanks slide past them as they travel. Several subplots make the story especially poignant, a depiction of how the French coped with dignity. MH