Dir/scr: Albert Dupontel. France. 2017. 117 minsOne of the most satisfying French costume pictures since Margueritte set the bar so high in 2015, screenwriter/director/actor Albert Dupontel’s lavish adaptation of Pierre Lemaitre’s Goncourt Prize-winning 2013 novel See You Up There (Au revoir la-haut) deploys assured visual bravado in the service of a bittersweet tale of poetic justice set in the final days of the First World War and the two years to follow.A sometimes melancholy, sometimes funny but always emotionally honest portrait of making do with the cards one is dealtThis exploration of the destructive reverberations of combat after the recognised hostilities are over may be set just about a hundred years ago but demonstrates that there’s no expiration date on the relevance of decrying the absurdity of war. As this splendidly cast tale of revenge makes clear, some will grow rich and some will be cheated whatever the original principles or affronts that pitted soldiers against each other. Propulsive but always clear story-telling and appealing Paris settings make this an excellent candidate for curious audiences beyond France.At the outset, an ex-soldier in his late 40s, Albert Maillard (Dupontel) is telling a French officer in Morocco how he came to be…