Women at War - Netflix Series

Women at War / Les Combattantes (2022) - Trailer (English Subs)
Unifrance

This show covers a lot of ground, the best term for it might be overstuffed. It's kind of like Bonfire of Destiny that way. Coincidentally (or maybe not) both are French shows with several of the same actresses.

Women, Audrey Fleurot: Marguerite de Lancastel. who is looking for her son

Bonfire, Audrey Fleurot as Adrienne de Lenverpré

Women, Julie de Bona: Mother Agnès

Bonfire, Julie de Bona as Rose Rivière

Bonfire, Camille Lou as Alice de Jeansin

Women, Camille Lou: Suzanne Faure, nurse, a former abortionist, accused of murder

The show is basically about women left behind in a small town in France when the men go off to fight world war one. We've got the four principles and then we have two other groups of women: the wives of the factory workers and the hookers employed at the local brothel. There are some male characters, but they are pretty much cardboard cutouts. We're here to watch the girls struggle, overcome and perhaps succeed.

The factory is building trucks and the employer has requested an exemption for his employees as building trucks is an important. From the size of the operation it appears that they are simply building and installing the cab and body on a chassis that comes from another factory. The boss man goes off to fight the war and leaves his wife in charge. The exemption fails to materialize and soldiers come and arrest all the workmen and march them off to war. The owner's wife offers to hire the wives to finish assembling the trucks.

The brother-in-law shows up and manages to screw the deal the factory had with a brewery, so now they have no customer for the trucks and wives don't get paid. The wife realizes the trucks could easily serve as ambulances and hires them out to the army. Only problem is she doesn't have any drivers for the ambulances.

Meanwhile the General sends his doctor son to perform a health check on the hookers at the brothel. He finds that six of them have syphilus, so they get kicked out of the brothel. The lead hooker arranges for them to drive the ambulances.

And that's without all the web of interpersonal relationships, secrets and associated drama.

The trucks look authentic, kudos to the prop department for arranging seven identical trucks. 

Bleriot XI

If all the regular drama isn't enough, we have a spy fly in on a for-real WW1 era monoplane. Very cool. How do you hand crank an airplane engine if you don't have someone to hold the brakes, if you even have brakes?

The Vintage Aviation Echo has a few choice words about this airplane:

"The Blériot will be the worst aircraft you will ever fly. You could fly it for 30 years and most of the flights will not be fun. But after the flight you have the huge satisfaction of knowing you’ve flown an authentic first generation aeroplane that is a pioneering design dating back over 110 years."

P. S. Originally wrote this back in April, but I suspect I got distracted by Fort Sedan, and both subjects got pushed off the back of the cart.