The Stopover

In the waning days of France’s military presence in Afghanistan, a planeful of French soldiers finishing a tour there are flown to the island of Cyprus, for a three-day recuperative stint of “sport, relaxation, and collective debriefing.” For longtime friends Aurore (Ariane Labed, Attenberg) and Marine (French singer-songwriter Soko, The Dancer) and their cohorts, this period of compulsory “decompression” includes five-star accommodations shared with oblivious-seeming civilian vacationers, virtual reality simulations of a tragic incident in the field, and increasingly hostile acts of aggression among the more volatile members of the unit. Aurore and Marine are two of the only women in the group, and an undercurrent of resentful misogyny bubbles up among the soldiers as they’re encouraged by their superiors—in a facile, perhaps futile exercise—to relive a catastrophe in order not to bring home the psychological damages wrought by life in a combat zone. Casting doubt on the odds of success for such a mission—and suggesting that these men and, particularly, these women are nowhere near a safe zone—filmmakers (and siblings) Delphine and Muriel Coulin create a mood of intensifying disquiet, tracking the soldiers through outbreaks of unprocessed rage and a fog of cognitive dissonance. —Lynn Rapoport