The 2012 French film, Against Their Will, tells the story of two Alsatian teenagers during the Nazi occupation of France.

Lisette (Louise Herrero) is blonde and praised, by the Nazis, for her Aryan appearance.  She appears to always have a positive attitude no matter what is going on.  Lisette’s father is a collaborationist with the Nazis and Lisette publicly defends the German occupiers while privately disdaining them and the war.  Her fiancé, Henri, has been conscripted into the army and has been sent to the Russian front.  He writes her letters but, because he is now required to write only in German and not in the French that he and Lisette grew up with, Lisette cannot read them.

Alice (Flore Bonaventura) is dark-haired and therefore considered to be inferior to Lisette.  This is despite the fact that Alice is fiercely intelligent and has been trained as a nurse.  Alice’s father is a doctor who has been sent to a prison camp as punishment for treating a wounded British soldier.  Alice is rebellious and, unlike Lisette, she has no compunctions about telling the Nazis exactly how she feels about them.  When she is ordered to salute the Nazi flag, she lifts on arm in a stiff salute while using her other hand to extend her middle finger.

Lisette and Alice are amongst the many teenagers who are taken from their families and sent to a German indoctrination camp, where the strict and cruel Trudl (Julia Thrunau) tries to brainwash them.  Lisette and Alice become unlikely friends as they are sent from the camp to work in a munitions factory and finally to serve in the Lebensborn, which was Germany’s eugenics program.  While Alice works in the maternity ward, Lisette’s Aryan appearance attracts the attention of a cruel SS officer.

Against Their Will starts out strong, showing how even the most intelligent and independent of people can be forced to do things that go against their beliefs, whether as a result of brainwashing or just plain fear.  The scenes in the indoctrination camp and later in the munitions factory show how the Nazi government treated both people in both Germany and the occupied territories as cannon fodder in their war with the Allies.  Even during an air raid, Alice is ordered to continue working and, even though one mistake could lead to an explosion that would kill both them and several of their co-workers, Alice and Lisette are continually told to speed up when it comes to making the shells that will later be dropped on the Allies.

The film loses its way during the final third, largely because French girls — even ones from the German-influenced Alsace region of France — would never have been sent to the Lebensborn, which was meant to be exclusively for the breeding of “pure” Germans.  By suggesting otherwise, the film unintentionally downplays the nationalism and the racism at the heart of the Nazi ideology.  The film’s framing device — in which one of the women tells her story to her granddaughter — also feels a bit awkward and the film also makes a bit too much use of the stereotype of the good German, the one Nazi who is not quite as cruel as the others.

The first half of the film is a strong portrayal of life under an occupation, with both of the lead actresses giving good performances as two women who deal with their circumstances in very different ways.  It’s just a shame that the film’s conclusion doesn’t live up to what came before it.