52 Films by Women Vol 9. 42. Desperate Journey (Director: Annabel Jankel)
The Nazi era drama, Desperate Journey, based on the
memoir by Austrian Jewish Holocaust survivor Freddie Knoller raises more
questions than it answers. It is set in two distinct time periods: the late
1930s (and perhaps early 1940s) in Austria and France and 1945 in an
unspecified country. The film only acknowledges that it is based on a true
story in the closing credits, specifying the source material. The opening
credits omit a number of featured actors – Ed Stoppard, Sienna Guillory, Nathaniel
Parker – which suggests a cause for dissatisfaction. The project was developed
by British director Michael Radford, best known for his Oscar nominated
international charmer Il Postino. He also
helmed White Mischief and an adaptation of George
Orwell’s 1984. Radford’s
screenplay credit remains, shared with Alfred Christian. The film headlines
Danish actor Lucas Lynggaard Tønnesen as Freddie, whose attempt to flee to
England stalls in Paris where he attempts to raise funds to purchase papers.
His co-star (as French singer Jacqueline) is Clara Rugaard, also from Denmark.
With dialogue predominantly in English, even though characters ‘speak’
German and French, the film fits the description of ‘Europudding’. It was filmed
in Hungary, with principal photography completed in 2024. A title card
announces, ‘Emblem Pictures – A Motion Picture Company’, as if Emblem Pictures requires
a qualifier. It is also the first film in seven years from the now
seventy-year-old director Annabel Jankel, who helmed the big budget movie, Super
Mario Bros. with her then-husband Rocky Morton in the 1990s, an
early live action videogame adaptation that almost put an end to the genre (if
only). Jankel’s father had participated in the Normandy landings and had never
spoken of his experiences. The film similarly does not speak of life in the
camps, in which survival in the face of industrialised killing was ugly, though
not as ugly and cruel as the actions of the Nazis.
Though strong on period detail, Jankel’s film never feels authentic. The
plot contrivances remind us that it is a movie, full of shorthand and
melodrama. Its point of interest is a Jewish man hiding in plain sight in
Paris, a city of grifters and drifters, whose talent [for speaking both French
and German] gives him a stay of execution and where the hardest question to
answer is, ‘where are you from?’
To illustrate the fall from normalcy, Desperate Journey begins in
Vienna with Freddie borrowing from a friend a picture magazine featuring with
women with more eyeliner than clothes. Hiding it behind the toilet cistern in
his home, Freddie is slapped by his father (Ed Stoppard) who warns him about
the dangers of going out. There’s a referendum that could decide the future of
Austria, whether to align with Germany or to stand up against Hitler’s regime.
The Austrian Chancellor’s radio message is brief. ‘I’m off. Good luck.’ From
then on, Jews are openly brutalised. Freddie’s brother, Eric (George Sear) gets
into a fight at school. Then the killing starts. A window is broken. Neighbours
are pushed from the top storey of a building. Mr Knoller keeps the lights
switched off as he gathers his family around him. There is a sharp knock on the
door. It is a neighbour, telling them to ‘come quickly.’ As they discretely
flee their property, the Knollers are advised not to look.
Through contacts, one but not both of the Knoller boys can be smuggled overseas
to America. ‘I can’t possibly choose,’ says Mrs Knoller (Sienna Guillory), a
reminder of Sophie’s Choice, a far more
emotional Nazi era drama. Eric is considered the more vulnerable. Freddie will
be smuggled to France and on to England. Before they part, Freddie bequeaths
Eric the magazine. The friend who loaned it to him has joined the Nazi Party. Led
by his father, Freddie leaves his mother. ‘Don’t look back,’ he is told.
‘You’ll only make it worse.’
For someone who has need of erotica, Freddie can at least talk to women.
He chats to Aiva (Anna Mawn) who is seated next to him on the floor of a truck
and travelling with her father. They exchange pleasantries and admiring
glances. The truck pulls up in a forest. The group makes its way to the border.
There is a patrol. One of the group is illuminated by torchlight. Cue machine
gun fire. Aiva’s father is shot. Freddie begs Aiva not to go back for him. She is
felled by a bullet.
Making his way across the unmarked border, Freddie spots a farm. He is
welcomed by the farmer’s wife (Niamh Cusack), less so by the husband (Hugo
Speer). For collectors of cliched shots, we have a close up of two barrels of a
shotgun, the focus switching so that we see the face of the farmer. ‘What are
you doing in my barn?’ Give him a Scottish accent (and a swamp) and he could be
Shrek. His wife feeds the scared young man and walks in on him as he takes a
bath. ‘Not looking,’ she declares. The bath is heated by a naked flame next to
it. The farmer’s wife reads Freddie’s papers. ‘You should get rid of these,’
she tells him. ‘They won’t help you.’ Such is the visual shorthand, we know
where they’ll end up.
Offering Freddie clothes, the farmer’s wife instructs her husband to
drive Freddie to the train station. He agrees in a surly faux Gallic manner. At
this point, Freddie is speaking French, although we only hear English, Jankel
not telegraphing the change of language. Breaking the awkward silence, Freddie
asks where his clothes are from. ‘Our son.’ It becomes clear, in dramatic
shorthand, that the farmer’s wife treats Freddie as the child she no longer
has.
He may be surly, but the farmer is good for a few francs, passed to
Freddie in an envelope. Freddie boards
the train, shows his ticket, but is flustered when asked for his papers.
Fortunately, there is a disturbance elsewhere in the carriage. Freddie’s ticket
is passed back to him, and he is spared further interrogation.
Freddie arrives in a neighbourhood filled with outdoor tables, women in
lingerie and men touting for business, more reminiscent of a folly bourgeois
than the Folies Bergère. Walking through an arch, he ogles the women on
display, but then is told by Christos (Fernando Guellar), a Spaniard with a
false looking moustache that he has to pay. ‘Do you know of a hotel where I
could stay?’ Freddie asks in fluent English (French). ‘How much money do you
have?’ Freddie naïvely shows him his brown envelope. Christos recommends a
nearby place, taking a coin for his trouble. ‘In Paris, you tip,’ he explains,
adding, ‘tell them Christos sent you.’
Checking in at the hotel run by the redoubtable Mrs Huberman (Smadi
Wolfman), Freddie provides a false name. First name, Robert, surname on that brief
case over there. ‘And your papers?’ He conducts a fruitless self-search.
‘Christos sent me,’ he explains. ‘That old scoundrel,’ Mrs Huberman remarks. ‘If
you have no papers, you must pay in advance. Three francs per night.’ Freddie
obliges.
Pictured: 'No workplace romances, please, there are Nazis present.' Christos (Fernando Guellar, left) introduces nightclub singer, Jacqueline (Clara Rugaard, centre) to Freddie (Lucas Lynggaard Tønnesen, right) in a scene from the film, 'Desperate Journey', directed by Annabel Jankel. Still courtesy of Emblem Pictures.
Having tested the bed, we don’t imagine that Freddie would stay in his room. We might think that like many a romantic, he would wander by the Seine. As noted above, the production was filmed in Hungary.
By sunrise, Freddie has entered the club and watched Josephine perform a
fan dance. Rugaard bears a resemblance to the teenage Juliette Lewis in her Cape
Fear years; the presentation of her in a skintight outfit feels obscene. Freddie
oversleeps. ‘Check out is at eleven,’ Mrs Huberman tells him. ‘What time is
it?’ Freddie asks. ‘Four o’clock.’ He pays for a second night. Mrs Huberman
offers him food which he devours appreciatively, adding a Hebrew blessing to
which Freddie responds, also in Hebrew. ‘A good Jewish boy. I knew it,’ she
remarks – or words to that effect. They discuss papers. Without them, Freddie
cannot possibly leave the country.
By this point, we wonder when the only English actor named in the opening
credits, Steven Berkoff, will appear? He turns up as Raphael, a supplier of
fake identity documents. ‘The price is 500 francs,’ he snorts. ‘I don’t have it,’
Freddie replies. ‘How much you got?’ He ganders at Freddie’s envelope. ‘F-off.’
he remarks, ‘I won’t risk my life for nine f-king francs.’ A complete
abandonment of the King’s English. Welcome back, dear sir.
Speaking better German than Christos, Freddie secures employment, attracting
the attention of Nazi officers and sending them to the club. He is introduced
to gruff chef Bossard (Nathaniel Parker) and is advised not to fraternize with
Josephine. He collects tips, with Christos taking a percentage. At one point,
Christos shares his dream to open a club of his own. But who owns the club
where he and Freddie work?
The film – and the memoir on which it is based - might be called Desperate
Journey, but the main desperation we perceive is that of Freddie wanting to
divest himself of his virginity. He is desperate to impress and provides
entertaining company for some German officers, one of whom decides to feel his
head for the ‘tell tale sign of the Jew’ – horns. This is the film’s most
intense scene. We know that Freddie ends up in a Death Camp, but not how. The
officer (Til Schweiger) massages Freddie’s skull, scanning for bumps. We know
he simply has to declare that he has found them in order for Freddie’s fate to
turn.
Pictured: Nightclub singer (Clara Rugaard) bids farewell to Freddie (Lucas Lynggaard Tønnesen, not pictured) in a scene from the Paris-set drama, 'Desperate Journey', directed by Annabel Jankel. Still courtesy of Emblem Pictures.
At certain points, Jankel cuts back to 1945, army officers leading Jewish
prisoners down a road at night as allied bombers fly overhead. In the first
scene, we see through a window the red flash of ordinance aimed at the sky. There
is a boy who has forgotten his shoes. Freddie, his head shaven but not too
closely, pleads with an officer for the boy to be allowed to go back for them.
‘Give him yours.’ The boy continues on the cold night march in bare feet. Then
in a subsequent sequence, a prisoner collapses. A Nazi officer shoots him.
‘Keep moving,’ the prisoners are told. Later another prisoner falls. This time,
Freddie acts.
In the last part of the film, Freddie ends up in a cell, sharing the
space with a mildly protesting rat. He is subsequently confronted by its human
counterpart. Truth, dare, Belgium. Briefcase, camera, 3000 francs. Dossier,
contact, sister. All of these are significant. In a scene in which Mrs Hoberman
is dragged out of her hotel by a Nazi known to our hero, Freddie does nothing,
lest he join her. He subsequently smothers a man. Is committing manslaughter a
belated act of revenge necessary for redemption? Why does such an act merit a
spell in a death camp and not a bullet? A
dog whose hair was mussed by Freddie in Act One corresponds to a dead dog hung
up with the Star of David later on.
At a certain point, perhaps even from the beginning, the facts of
Knoller’s flight have turned into an adventure yarn. Is this finally why so
many English actors have removed their names from the opening credits? Or
perhaps they did so for political reasons. ‘Emblem Pictures – A Motion Picture
Company’. Therein lies a tale.
Reviewed at Vue, Piccadilly, Screen Two,
Central London, Thursday 4 December 2025, 17:30 screening
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