In strategic terms, it is not so advantageous to have the front line on your national soil. At least for French soldiers during World War I, it provided opportunities to return home on furloughs. However, it is decidedly a mixed blessing when they also bring home their post-traumatic stress and find gossip waiting for them. There is plenty of tension on the home front in Xavier Beauvois’s “The Guardians,” which opens May 4 in New York.
Hortense Sandrail is not called a matriarch for no reason. Despite her advanced age, she has kept the Paridier Farm productive while the men in her family have served at the front. She has done so mostly with just the help of her daughter Solange.
