Charlotte Gray/The Land Girls [DVD]

A box set of Second World War films centring on women. In 'Charlotte Gray' Charlotte Gray (Cate Blanchett) agrees to go on a special mission to France when her RAF boyfriend, originally scheduled to carry out the mission himself, goes missing. Based in a remote French farm run by M. Levade (Michael Gambon), her job is to liaise with local Resistance fighters, including Levade's son Julien (Billy Crudup). She then finds that she has to help harbour two Jewish children, hiding them from the Nazis who have recently deported their parents; but the presence of the children on the farm brings unwanted attention from the collaborationist schoolteacher Renech (Anton Lesser) and risks exposing the Resistance operations. In 'The Land Girls', whilst the men are sent abroad to battle against Hitler's army, England's women are left to do their bit on the homefront. In 1944, three young women - Stella (Catherine McCormack), Ag (Rachel Weisz) and Prue (Anna Friel) - are sent to work on a Dorset farm, where they are forced into an accelerated learning process, with thoughts of the war never far away.