A justifiable favourite at the recent Alliance Francais Film Festival, FAREWELL, MR HAFFMAN gets a well deserved general release just in time for Easter.

Mr. Haffman is a Jewish jeweller practising his craftsmanship in Paris as the Nazi’s occupy the city. Preparing to take his family into hiding in the unoccupied country, he signs over the shop to his offsider, François, on the proviso that after occupation he will be reinstated as the rightful owner.

But things don’t according to plan and although Mr. Haffman secures the extraction of his family, he is stuck in Paris and is forced to seek succour in the basement of his old home and shop.

Meanwhile his offsider passes off Haffman’s creations as his own and finds genuine buyers within the Nazi officer class. Agreeing to secure his old boss’s safety and security, the offsider makes extraordinary demands on Mr. Haffman

Writer/director Fred Cavayé’s film is based on the multi Molière Award-winning play from Jean-Philippe Daguerre, and stars the legendary Daniel Auteuil in the title role.

The film co-stars Gilles Lellouche as François, a crippled and sterile man whose only goal is to start a family with Blanche.

The two men are terrific in their portrayals but the film is stolen from under their noses by Sara Giraudeau as Blanche, in a performance that spins the moral compass in magnetic whirls of pathos, empathy and power.

In FAREWELL, MR. HAFFMANN, the viewer is thrown into the moral morass of what we talk about when we talk about Anne Frank, the dilemmas, the duplicities, opportunity versus opportunism, capitulation and collaboration.

Rich in moral complexity and empathy, with twists that twine the yarn to its surprising conclusion, FAREWELL, MR. HAFFMAN is well worth saying hello to.