Entre Nous opens with young Helene, a Jewish refugee during WW2 whose mother has recently died, arriving at a sort of holding place for women that is neither a concentration camp nor a five star hotel. I'm unclear on exactly what these establishments were in France at the time, but Helene manages to escape quickly by wedding a solider in need of a wife, despite the fact that she obviously isn't interested in him at all and if she had the means she would have preferred to leave him right there at gate, he was her ticket out of the camp.
Madeleine, a much more privileged French woman, is in her late teens and happily newly married when her husband is killed towards the end of the war during a shoot out during an arrest of her art teacher. Eventually she impulsively remarries to a man she cares little for because she became pregnant.
In the early 1950s, the two women are young mothers of elementary school aged children and develop a friendship that slowly turns into a romance. Director Diane Kurys based this film on her own childhood experience of her mother leaving her father for another woman. There's nothing to "interpret" here. It's about two women falling in love and leaving their husbands. That wasn't an easy thing to do in the 1950s, and so any reticence you see on the part of either woman is because they know they are abandoning social propriety and financial security in order to be together. They risked losing their children and probably couldn't have made it work without the assistance of Madeleine's wealthy and kind parents.
I also highly recommend Diane Kurys' film Peppermint Soda. I actually like Peppermint Soda more, it's a light hearted comedy for the most part, and also semi-autobiographical about the directors' childhood and teen years.
Madeleine, a much more privileged French woman, is in her late teens and happily newly married when her husband is killed towards the end of the war during a shoot out during an arrest of her art teacher. Eventually she impulsively remarries to a man she cares little for because she became pregnant.
In the early 1950s, the two women are young mothers of elementary school aged children and develop a friendship that slowly turns into a romance. Director Diane Kurys based this film on her own childhood experience of her mother leaving her father for another woman. There's nothing to "interpret" here. It's about two women falling in love and leaving their husbands. That wasn't an easy thing to do in the 1950s, and so any reticence you see on the part of either woman is because they know they are abandoning social propriety and financial security in order to be together. They risked losing their children and probably couldn't have made it work without the assistance of Madeleine's wealthy and kind parents.
I also highly recommend Diane Kurys' film Peppermint Soda. I actually like Peppermint Soda more, it's a light hearted comedy for the most part, and also semi-autobiographical about the directors' childhood and teen years.