Review: 'Transatlantic' is a clunky, quasi-historical melodrama about Varian Fry
The story of Varian Fry, the Emergency Rescue Committee (later to become today's International Rescue Committee) and its efforts to spirit refugee artists and intellectuals out of Vichy France in the early years of World War II has become a historical, ahistorical, quasi-historical romantic melodrama, "Transatlantic." Written by Anna Winger ("Unorthodox") and Daniel Hendler, and premiering this week on Netflix, the seven-episode series was "inspired by," though not adapted from, the 2019 novel "The Flight Portfolio," in which author Julie Orringer imagined Fry's life as a closeted gay man. It's a storyline here, along with other tales of love in a time of fascism, whose heroes get up close and personal while handling collaborationist French policemen, obstructive American bureaucrats, unpredictable
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