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Brian De Palma's depiction of the Incident on Hill 192 during the Viet Nam war, and by "incident" the Army meant the brutal kidnapping, gang rape, and eventual murder of Phan Thi Mao, an innocent 21-year-old taken from her village by soldiers who had become thugs. It's a largely accurate recounting too, and I liked how it focused on a single horrifying episode in the war vs. Creating a grand saga. It's also elevated considerably by Sean Penn, who's fantastic here, and in a smaller role, Ving Rhames.

The film is at its strongest in its middle, when we get an absolutely harrowing depiction of the treatment of the young woman. The difficult situations a couple of the men were in - ordered by their superior officer to commit war crimes, but not wanting to - were filled with tension, and well rendered.

Unfortunately, it's a little cliché at times in what leads up to that, and felt cartoonish in some of its portrayals, like John C. Reilly's character, who seemed especially dumb. With that said, just how evil Don Patrick Harvey's character probably couldn't be overdone - after serving just three years of what was originally supposed to be a life sentence, he was a member of a white supremacy group, and in 1991 was charged as an accessory after the fact in the murder of a black sailor. Michael J. Fox's character (Robert M. Storeby) may seem a little too much like a saint, but it is true that he didn't take part in the crime, and then afterwards had to persist through death threats and the indifference of his commanding officer.

Where De Palma falters most is at the ending of the film, however. As much as I loved to see Dolores Park and its beautiful view into San Francisco, this entire scene designed to create some kind of "feel good" closure should have been cut. He was also remiss in explaining exactly what happened to the four soldiers in real life after the film ended - there was a single note after part of the credit roll, and it was incomplete, not wanting to touch the depressing fact that the sergeant (Penn's character) was paroled after just two years. However, I have to give him credit for making this in 1989, a conservative era in America, and telling this painful story, an example of something that's all too common in warfare.

Such a wild film, all over the place really, but with its heart in the right place. I thought it was at its strongest in its portrayal of women who support each other despite each other's flaws and things that conservatives or bigots might condemn. They include sex workers, trans people, lesbians, a fallen nun, and those with AIDS - and the level of simple acceptance here is wonderful, even if the film isn't very deep in examining any of these things. There are also strong performances all around from the women in the cast, most notably Cecilia Roth, Antonia San Juan, and Penélope Cruz. At the same time, the plot is quite a soap opera, about as wild as those patterns and colors that Almodóvar gives us, and just a little too melodramatic for my taste. Lots of coincidences, lots of twists and turns, though maybe the point was to show how women persevere through life's invariable ups and downs. That included those wonderful moments of the mother and daughter looking out for the dad with dementia, one of my favorite little bits.

"You carry on like a child. For the last time, when will you be reasonable?" "Never! ... Being reasonable is being resigned. Which is being old. And I can't grow old. It's not in my nature."

In this film, Julien Duvivier serves up a sympathetic portrayal of growing old, especially as it relates to those whose profession was acting. There are three distinct male characters here: a callous lothario with a long trail of broken hearts behind him (Louis Jouvet), a serious guy who's been scarred personally and professionally (Victor Francen), and a playful imp who was never more than an understudy because he lacked talent (Michel Simon). There are female characters as well but they are less developed, beyond many of them having fond memories of the womanizer despite him not even remembering them, though one speaks for every ageing actress ever when she says of her roles "I began as Juliet, and ended as the nurse." There is also a delightful couple who have lived in bliss unmarried for 35 years and have a large family, something that wouldn't be possible in an American film during this period.

There is a painful connection between the first and second men which weaves some melodrama into the story: the wife of the latter ran away with the lothario, then died under mysterious circumstances. While that meant nothing to the womanizer, the other man was devastated, and he's been further scarred by how theater evolved over his career to move away from the more scholarly works he adored. Meanwhile, Jouvet's character is at it again, seducing a wide-eyed 17 year old despite a significant age gap (Madeleine Ozeray, who was actually 31). He's a maddening guy, as there are several instances where he shows he discarded women and doesn't even remember them, including a case where he remembers more about the horse he bet on in a race than a woman who's remembered him in her will (which was sad but amusing). This was a sharply drawn character, but the way his story worked out in the second half of the film felt a little contrived and overwrought, less satisfying than it could have been.

Simon's character is the one who brings the most life to the film, and who probably rounded my review score up. Early on we hear of his exploits in the old age home, including cooking herring in his room, sneaking out at night and crushing the gardener's flowers as he scales the walls, playing pranks on the more serious guy like using itching powder, and prancing around nude in the halls, which he claims the women don't mind. He's befriended a group of boy scouts over the years when he's outside the home, but then suffers when one of them tells him he's going away to get married and won't be scouting anymore, which was kind of like the pain parents feels when their children grow up and leave home. Similarly, his drafting a list of demands against the home at a time when unbeknownst to him and the others it's about to go bankrupt seemed like a mirror to a time of life when our days are numbered, and such brashness is futile.

In one of this man's pranks he gets a fake obituary printed of the serious actor, one that appears in small print well into the newspaper. There is melancholy and humiliation in having one's life summed up and shown for what it is, small in the big picture of the world, and soon to be forgotten. In a parallel to this, there is a fine eulogy at the end, which was stirring:

"Cabrissade, you never had talent! But we shall still miss you. You loved the theater, and it only rewarded you with setbacks and failure. But you remained loyal to it. Loyal to your first love, your obscure, marvelous dream. That's what moves us here today. My poor friend. Rest in peace, Cabrissade. Actors serve a noble cause, and when in the presence of something ennobling, we become noble ourselves."

As with his other films, Duvivier brings an emotional force to the film through moments like this, or when he puts together a montage of elderly faces at a wedding and a funeral, made more meaningful by the feeling of perspective in their eyes. This is one where the script wasn't perfect, but it had depth and he kept things moving with his editing, making it an enjoyable experience.