Is any piece of art worth a human life?
This is the question confronting Corinne and Rose as they try to protect a Monet portrait from the Nazis in war-torn Europe.
"Girl with Parasol" was painted in 1905. It shows a girl with a white parasol standing on a bridge above a lily pond. The model was the daughter of Monet's art dealer. She was fifteen, and her name was Tania.
When the Germans invade France in 1940, Tania's daughter Corinne manages to hide the portrait. The Nazis are intent on stealing as much French artwork as they can. They expropriate the family gallery and confiscate the stock. Corinne turns for help to her friend Rose, who is a curator at the Musée du Jeu de Paume.
The Jeu de Paume is used by the Nazis as a transit point for artworks looted from the Jews. Rose is the sole French curator allowed to remain. She spies on the Germans throughout the war, and risks her life to pass details of mass-scale looting to the Resistance. (Rose Valland really existed.)
All goes well until Corinne meets Thomas, a German diplomat. Thomas is handsome, entertaining, and openly sceptical of the Nazis. At first Corinne resists his advances, but they begin an affair and start to fall in love.
And then Foreign Minister Ribbentrop announces he wants a Monet portrait, word gets out that Corinne owns "Girl with Parasol," and Thomas is pressured to get hold of the painting. Trapped, desperate and panicking, he triggers a chain of events that will take away Corinne's cherished portrait - maybe forever.
The theme of Nazi art thefts has recently been portrayed in two major films: The Monuments Men (which shows how stolen art was tracked down after the German defeat) and Woman in Gold (how the owner of a stolen portrait obtained legal redress). Girl with Parasol covers the same subject but from a different angle: how art was stolen from Jews in Occupied France.
This is the question confronting Corinne and Rose as they try to protect a Monet portrait from the Nazis in war-torn Europe.
"Girl with Parasol" was painted in 1905. It shows a girl with a white parasol standing on a bridge above a lily pond. The model was the daughter of Monet's art dealer. She was fifteen, and her name was Tania.
When the Germans invade France in 1940, Tania's daughter Corinne manages to hide the portrait. The Nazis are intent on stealing as much French artwork as they can. They expropriate the family gallery and confiscate the stock. Corinne turns for help to her friend Rose, who is a curator at the Musée du Jeu de Paume.
The Jeu de Paume is used by the Nazis as a transit point for artworks looted from the Jews. Rose is the sole French curator allowed to remain. She spies on the Germans throughout the war, and risks her life to pass details of mass-scale looting to the Resistance. (Rose Valland really existed.)
All goes well until Corinne meets Thomas, a German diplomat. Thomas is handsome, entertaining, and openly sceptical of the Nazis. At first Corinne resists his advances, but they begin an affair and start to fall in love.
And then Foreign Minister Ribbentrop announces he wants a Monet portrait, word gets out that Corinne owns "Girl with Parasol," and Thomas is pressured to get hold of the painting. Trapped, desperate and panicking, he triggers a chain of events that will take away Corinne's cherished portrait - maybe forever.
The theme of Nazi art thefts has recently been portrayed in two major films: The Monuments Men (which shows how stolen art was tracked down after the German defeat) and Woman in Gold (how the owner of a stolen portrait obtained legal redress). Girl with Parasol covers the same subject but from a different angle: how art was stolen from Jews in Occupied France.
