Backstretch

They say that Jim Sheridan manages to turn all his movies into stories about his own family. Even his first film, "My Left Foot", the story of Christy Brown and his struggle with cerebral palsy is, in parts, about Sheridan's relationship with his mother.

Just after the end of WWII, a peasant boy who has fought as a guerilla has difficulty adjusting back to a peaceful village life.

The marriage of a wealthy and frivolous member of French nobility, Loyette Merval, to an American aristocratic idler named Willard Standish, is a loving one, except for their mutual dissatisfaction with Willard's idleness. After Willard becomes a chauffeur, Loyette's subsequent disgust causes him to quit. When the war begins, Willard joins the French Secret Service, while Loyette continues her social life, upset about their separation. After Willard, wounded, hides in a convent, Loyette leaves to find him. As the Germans approach, the nuns escape. Finding Willard alone, Loyette, disguised as a nun, hides him in the altar. Although ordered to be shot, Loyette's air of innocence saves her. When she overhears a plot to have the Allies chase the Germans over a mined hill, Loyette kills the soldier on watch. Although she and Willard are captured and killed, they meet crossing the River Styx and embrace as they sail to eternity.

An old farmhouse in southwestern France, not far from the Spanish border, serves as a refuge for Jewish refugees during World War Two.