Aside from being cheese eating surrender monkeys, I'm starting to think the French make some of the best films around. This is a searingly honest, devastatingly unflinching look at young men coping with life changing facial injuries during the early 20th century while at war. There's no mollycoddling here... everyone thinks these once handsome guys now look like freaks, and even most of their former friends and family want nothing to with them. Lacking in self-confidence due to their appearances, the hospital for them is their prison, and they entertain thoughts of self-harm and suicide daily. Their only company is a few sympathetic nurses and a doctor who's bedside manner consists of a few unhelpful platitudes. Life for them will never be the same again, but worse than their respective mutilations may be the despair...

Not a foot is put wrong, not a single minute is wasted in this brilliant drama, as our lead, who is scarred by an explosion on the battlefield, must learn to adapt to a new life as well as people's perceptions of him. Without a jawbone he can't even speak, and is forced to write everything down with a piece of chalk on a blackboard. Him and his fellow patients survive on games of cards and gallows humour, while stuck in this dingy building. It's powerful stuff, and I was transfixed throughout at the plight of all the characters, on whom I must say the make up was fantastic... You'd almost believe it was a documentary. But of course it couldn't be... you can't film in colour something that took place 100 years ago. DUH. Anyway, this is a work of art I'll remember for a long time, and I'd advise ALL of you to see it. You ALL won't, though. Your loss.... 9/10

Based upon a true story which reportedly happened to the novelist's ancestor, "la chambre des officiers" is a strong manifesto against war.The first third of the movie (before Adrien leaves his bed) strongly recalls Dalton Trumbo's masterpiece "Johnny got his gun" but with a weaker direction.The voice over ,the nurse and the visit of the secretary,not to mention the "dream" about the deer ,everything reminds me of "Johnny ..." (1971).But the movie hits its stride afterward ,and,despite of overlong sequences ,grabs the audience till the end when two wonderful sequences (the one with the little girl in the metro (=subway),then the last sequence with the woman who repeats "you're no monster")preserve the viewer from despair.

Whereas war movies have often displayed maimed soldiers,they have rarely (if they have)shown disfigured fighters.In the hospital ,we catch glimpses of the outside world only from the windows;"From a distance,one of the unfortunate victims says ,we all look the same".And when the war's over,the 11th of November 1918,the hero is the only one who does not rejoice.Because His war is not over:it has only begun.And these last sequences ,as I said above, are the most poignant of the entire movie.

"La chambre des officiers" was first a best-seller;it was written by an engineer who had never published anything before.

Géraldine goes to war again: this time it's the WWI and the movie is pretty bad: first of all, it's shot in Sepia and it's just awful! It's not because old pictures turned yellow that this past world must be seen that way (or in black and white either)! Then, i'm a bit shocked by this loose Geraldine, who spent a night with this soldier as soon as she left another on a train for the war zone! At the end, she appears for 6 minutes but she was cute in this old fashion! Except for her appearance, the movie is totally depressive as it's a Darkman getting rehabilitated in a hospital room: any fans ???