Female Agents

Jean-Paul Salomé, director and co-writer of Female Agents (Les Femmes de l’Ombre in the original French), got the idea for his 2008 film from an obituary. While in London in 2004 he read about Lise Villameur, who’d just died aged 98. During the Second World War she’d been an agent for the French Section of Britain’s Special Operations Executive. Parachuted into France to set up her own cell and run her own agents, Villameur was described by the folk at SOE training school as “quite imperturbable… would remain cool and collected in any situation . . . she was very much ahead of her fellow students”. That’s exactly how Sophie Marceau plays Louise … Read more