Irena’s Vow (2023)

There’s something subversive about watching someone drug a Nazi’s tea. Not the act itself—that part seems perfectly reasonable—but the way Sophie Nélisse goes about it in Irena’s Vow. No theatrical flourishes. No meaningful glances at the camera. Just the methodical efficiency of someone adding sugar to their morning routine, except the sugar happens to be a sedative and the routine involves relocating twelve hidden Jewish refugees before breakfast.

Louise Archambault’s adaptation of Dan Gordon’s stage play tells the remarkable true story of Irena Gut Opdyke, who spent the war years playing an impossible game of hide-and-seek with Nazi authorities. The stakes? Human lives. The hiding place? The basement of her employer’s villa. Her employer being, naturally, a German commandant who fancies himself quite the party host.

You’d think such material would practically direct itself, but period pieces about wartime heroism have a nasty habit of drowning in their own worthiness. This one mostly avoids that fate, though it occasionally veers perilously close to the sort of film that gets screened in high school history classes between discussions about essay structure.

Nélisse carries the entire enterprise on her shoulders with what I’d describe as studied understatement. She’s mastered that particular brand of screen acting where everything meaningful happens behind the eyes. When Rugemer (Dougray Scott) wakes one night to mysterious scratching sounds from below and calls for exterminators the next morning—convinced he has a rat problem—Nélisse’s face becomes a masterclass in controlled panic. The rats, of course, are twelve people trying not to cough.

The film’s theatrical DNA shows through occasionally, particularly in its preference for tastefully lit interior shots. Everything looks suspiciously clean for wartime Poland, which creates an odd disconnect. I suppose there’s something to be said for focusing on moral rather than literal filth, but the pristine production design sometimes makes events feel removed from their historical context.

Scott delivers what might be his most interesting performance in years as Major Rugemer. Rather than the expected caricature of Nazi villainy, he presents something more unsettling: a man who genuinely believes he’s civilised. His Rugemer hosts dinner parties, appreciates good wine, and treats his housekeeper with what he considers appropriate courtesy. That this same man participates in systematic genocide becomes the film’s most chilling observation about how ordinary evil can appear.

The supporting cast of hidden survivors gets enough individual attention to feel human rather than symbolic, though Gordon’s screenplay occasionally relies on familiar dramatic beats. There’s the inevitable close call during a dinner party. The suspicious noise at midnight. The helpful lie that saves everyone just in time. These moments work because of Nélisse’s performance, but they still feel borrowed from other, similar stories.

Where the film stumbles, in my view, is in its tonal inconsistencies. One sequence plays almost like farce—Irena frantically serving canapés upstairs while coordinating signals to people hiding below—but the very next scene depicts brutal street executions. This whiplash between comedy and horror feels more accidental than intentional, suggesting a director not entirely sure what kind of film she’s making.

Yet when Irena’s Vow finds its rhythm, usually during quiet moments between Irena and her charges, something genuinely moving emerges. A sequence where Christmas celebrations provide inadvertent cover for Hanukkah observances reveals the film’s deeper understanding of how humanity persists despite systematic attempts to eliminate it.

The runtime feels indulgent at 121 minutes. Certain scenes, particularly those involving Nazi officials who aren’t Rugemer, drag without adding much insight. There’s a sadistic SS officer named Rokita whose scenes feel imported from a different, more conventionally brutal war film. His presence serves the plot but disrupts the more nuanced tone Archambault establishes elsewhere.

What rescues the film from its occasional missteps is its core insight about resistance during moral catastrophe. Irena’s heroism doesn’t announce itself with stirring speeches or dramatic gestures. Instead, it manifests through daily decisions that compound into something extraordinary. Her vow—”If I could save a life, I would”—becomes less a declaration than a practical philosophy applied one meal, one lie, one sleepless night at a time.

The real Irena Gut Opdyke appears briefly during the end credits, and she looks nothing like the trembling saint of Archambault’s imagination. The historical Irena seems to have been more of a risk-taking force of nature. But perhaps that’s beside the point. This version serves the story being told, even if it occasionally sanitises the complexity of its subject.

Irena’s Vow succeeds despite its limitations because it understands that extraordinary circumstances don’t require extraordinary people—just ordinary people willing to act when action seems impossible. The film may not achieve the cinematic greatness its subject deserves, but it honours her legacy through its commitment to quiet truth-telling over manufactured inspiration. Sometimes, apparently, that’s enough.