For You I Will Fight

CinemaSerf

Maybe it ought to have been called “Ana Joins Up”? This is an introduction to not just “Ana” (Salomé Richard) but to life in the Belgian army where she and a group of other women are starting out on their training. We have learned a little about this woman from the opening few scenes in a sex clinic, but for now she lives cheek-by-jowl in a barracks where the sergeant (Jean Schneider) likes to spring surprise inspections on them. She is put in charge and so is responsible for allocating the tasks that will keep their kit and their room clean, and that’s about as far as this goes… It’s quite intimately filmed but takes us precisely nowhere in terms of character establishment or development and is quite clearly just a scene-setter for what’s to come.