The Accompanist

1992 French film

11 November 1992 (1992-11-11)

Running time

102 minutesCountryFranceLanguageFrenchBudget$8.4 millionBox office$6.2 million^[1]

The Accompanist (French: L'Accompagnatrice) is a 1992 French film directed by Claude Miller from a novel by Nina Berberova, and starring Romane Bohringer, Yelena Safonova and Richard Bohringer.

Plot

In Paris under German occupation in 1942, a young and impoverished pianist named Sophie gets a job as live-in aide and accompanist to a famous and glamorous singer, Irène. As Irène's possessive husband and manager, Charles, a devious businessman collaborating with the Vichy regime and the Nazis, wrestles with his conscience, the highly impressionable Sophie becomes obsessively close to Irène, living life vicariously through Irène's musical and amorous exploits, particularly an affair with Jacques, a handsome member of the Resistance.

Tipped off by contacts, Charles wants to flee with Irène and the indispensable Sophie to the safety of unoccupied Algeria, but Irène refuses a provincial backwater. So Charles takes the pair by foot over the Pyrenees into neutral Spain, from where they make their way by sea to London. There Irène can resume her life as fêted prima donna and lover of Jacques who, as she knew all along, is now based there. Sophie is a silent witness to the deepening unhappiness of Charles, a fish out of water in an alien environment, and the increasingly reckless behaviour of Irène.