This flashback drama has an absorbing and initially fascinating idea, but proves boring in its progressive exposition and over-melodramatic towards the end. Touching early scenes - between Christopher Plummer as an ex-German soldier just retired from his Canadian butcher's shop, and Susannah York-lookalike Catherine Hicks as his daughter - go for nothing once the action reaches the French rural community where Plummer fell in love with a young French housewife in World War Two. The village, however, has a subsequent history of which he is unaware. Michael Lonsdale's character as the English-speaking mayor, who knows `ambush' and `skirmish' but not the English for `chest', is, with Christopher Cazenove's stereotype English reporter abroad, the most flawed character. Despite civilised performances neither can do much with these types and a sideline romance between Cazenove and Hicks is risibly handled. Hicks and Plummer both have their moments, without much apparent help from director Geoffrey Reeve. Amélie Pick is very attractive as Plummer's lost love, and Tony Kinsey's music has that haunting quality that so much of Souvenir lacks.


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