Adieu Monsieur Haffmann (2021)

Paris, summer 1941. Persecutions of Jews carried out by the Vichy regime are intensifying in the occupied zone. Joseph Haffmann, a Jewish jeweler born in Poland, urges his wife and their three children to leave Paris for the Free Zone after noticing a notice posted on the wall of his shop by the Prefecture of the Seine, announcing a census of all Jews residing in the Seine department before [date missing], in accordance with the law of June 2, 1941. He explains to his wife that he must first take care of his shop, which he hopes to reclaim once the war is over. Haffmann therefore proposes a deal to his employee, François Mercier, whom he hardly knows. He offers Mercier the chance to become the owner of his jewelry shop through a fake deed of sale; Mercier would run the shop during Haffmann’s exile, and Haffmann would get it back at the end of the war. In exchange, Mercier and his wife can move into the Haffmanns’ apartment above the shop, and Joseph will later help Mercier set up his own store. Mercier accepts and becomes the owner of the business. However, Haffmann fails to leave Paris and is forced to take refuge in the cellar of his shop, which no longer belongs to him. On two occasions, the Jews in the neighborhood are arrested (first foreign Jews, then everyone). François Mercier sells jewelry to a German, Commandant Jünger, who in return supplies him with jewelry stolen from Jews. Since he is not as good a jeweler as Haffmann, he has Haffmann work for him in the cellar. The couple are unable to have a child, and a fertility test taken by Blanche comes back positive. François, who is apparently sterile, asks his wife to sleep with Haffmann so she can get pregnant. She refuses at first, but eventually agrees. But it doesn’t work, so they have to try again. Blanche therefore meets Joseph regularly in the cellar. In reality, however, Joseph and Blanche do not have sex and simply talk. Later, Joseph realizes where the jewelry he is reusing for François’s designs comes from when he recognizes a locket he had made himself for a Jewish couple. As a result, Joseph refuses to keep working for François. François, now out of his mind, beats him and locks him in the cellar. Blanche also discovers that François burns Joseph’s letters instead of mailing them, claiming that it is too dangerous. One evening, when he comes home drunk from a party with Germans, François rapes his wife. As a result, Blanche finally becomes pregnant. One day, while Commandant Jünger is in the shop, Joseph deliberately comes up from the cellar. The commandant tells François, “Luck is like war; it doesn’t last.” Joseph tells François, “You see, fear can change sides.” François steals Joseph’s identity card to go and sell his Monet painting, and is arrested in the street by French police. Blanche sees what happens but does not intervene. She frees Joseph from the cellar, gives him François’s identity card (having taken care to swap his identity photo with her husband’s), and urges him to flee. François is imprisoned, mistaken for Joseph Haffmann, whom he had intended to denounce. Meanwhile, Joseph finally reunites with his family in the Free Zone.