Larry Oliver Film Reviews

  Pictured : Fifteen-year-old Emma ( Lila Gueneau , right) dances with her husband Paul (Thomas Doret) in a scene from the Swiss film,  À bras-le-corps ( Silent Rebellion ), co-written and directed by Marie-Elsa Sgualdo . Still courtesy of Salaud Morriset .  What is neutrality? A conscious effort to recuse yourself from responsibility? Allowing events take their course without consideration of the outcome? Neutrality is an illusion, a pretence, a position taken to avoid conflict with others by formally treating all parties the same but pragmatically engaging with some parties more than others. Neutrality is diplomatic acquiescence. It is how Switzerland conducted itself in World War Two (1939-45). Swiss film director Marie-Elsa Sgualdo sets her debut feature film Silent Rebellion ( À bras-le-corps ) in her native country - specifically a village bordering France in the Swiss Jura - in 1943. Co-written (with Sgualdo) by Nadine Lamari, it follows fifteen-year-old Emma (...

  Switzerland was late in giving women the right to vote. This was only achieved in 1971 following a public referendum. In other countries female suffrage was achieved through Act of Parliament. The first country to give women the right to vote was New Zealand in 1893. This was followed by Australia in 1902 (though not, sadly Aborigines until 1962), Finland in 1906 and Norway in 1913. The UK offered women with land the right to vote in 1918, before universal suffrage was declared in 1928. American women got the right to vote in 1920. In France, the land of liberty, fraternity and equality, women got the right to vote in April 1944. Even in Pakistan, women got the vote in 1947, reaffirmed in 1956, when elections took place. Why in Switzerland did it take so long? The country had something called direct democracy, which is to say, that if you pass a law and people weren’t very happy about it, you could amass 50,000 signatures and compel a referendum. The people – that is, up unti...