Television Reviews : Christopher Plummer Revives War in ‘Souvenir’

A fascinating story struggles to get out of “Souvenir” (Showtime cable, 8 p.m. Sunday, then at different times on Nov. 3, 9, 14 and 22). It’s about two survivors of a terrible World War II incident in a small town in France. One of the survivors was a German soldier; the other was a member of the Resistance.

Paul Wheeler’s script (based on a novel, “The Pork Butcher,” by David Hughes) concentrates almost exclusively on the ex-German soldier (Christopher Plummer) as he returns to the town more than 40 years later, now as an American. The flashbacks we see are his. Until the next to the last scene, we hear the tale of his Resistance counterpart (Michael Lonsdale) only through occasional comments by others.

With a little more care, this might have worked as a suspense-building device; the story certainly crackles in the home stretch. Yet the first half of the film is awfully soggy.

Instead of developing the history of the man from the Resistance, the film examines the strained relations between the ex-German and his daughter (Catherine Hicks). Then it dwells inordinately on a contrived romance between the daughter and a nosy British reporter (Christopher Cazenove).

Meanwhile, the victims of the wartime incident remain pretty abstractions in the ex-soldier’s memory, rather than real people. Plummer does a fine job, but he’s unable to carry the entire emotional weight of this film by himself.

Geoffrey Reeve directed for executive producer Andre A. Blay.