15/10/2014 - The film, based on Vera Brittain’s bestselling memoir, is a signal achievement for director James Kent, who makes his feature debut after a long career in television

Testament of Youth, the Centrepiece Gala at the ongoing British Film Institute London Film Festival (8-19 October), based on Vera Brittain’s bestselling memoir about the First World War is a signal achievement for director James Kent, who makes his feature debut after a long career in television. Kent crafts an incredibly moving tale of the tragic loss of lives of those cut off in the flower of their youth. Granted that in Brittain’s memoir he, and screenwriter Juliette Towhidi (Calendar Girls), had some powerful source material, but condensing that lengthy tome into a compelling cinematic narrative is a feat indeed. 

The film opens in 1914 in a British rural idyll. The characters are golden and born into privilege. The strong-minded Vera, who wants to join her brother Edward and his friends Victor and Roland at university in Oxford, against the objections of her father, enjoys with them what will be the last holiday of their young lives before the outbreak of war. Though Victor has a crush on Vera, her heart is set on Roland and he reciprocates. What promises to be a perfect start of term, all together in Oxford, is shattered when war is declared and the men (except Victor who is turned down due to poor eyesight) enlist and find themselves on the frontline trenches in France, battling the German army, Spanish flu and mustard gas. Vera, suddenly alone in Oxford reading English literature, finds a new vocation and joins the war effort as a nurse, and eventually volunteers to go to the war front. Tragedy strikes once, twice and then thrice. After the war Vera becomes one of the leading pacifists of her time.

Testament of Youth is of a piece with Joe Wright’s Atonement [+lee también:
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The film is produced by Heyday Films in association with Hotwells Productions, with backing from BBC Films, Screen Yorkshire, the British Film Institute, Nordisk Film Production and LipSync. Protagonist Pictures is handling international sales and Lionsgate UK will release in the UK on January 16, 2015.

(Traducción del inglés)