La faute à Fidel!

Wonderful movie that clears out your mind and leaves you purified when feeling so dirty. Wonderful little girl! Wonderful little boy! So amazed by how they are that I don't feel like saying more on the movie in general. Anna de la Mesa is so real. All that phases she goes through and all the complication of her mind are beautifully harmonized with the politics. It's not a story of a changing family (life); it's rather the display of a huge load on the shoulders of a little girl. It's worth it; watch it.

(By the way just because I watched the two in a row; I must say that "La Faute à Fidel" is much more effective than "Persepolis" in order of viewing the world from a growing child's point-of-view. Good directing there by Julie Gavras.)

Hard social facts are faced from the perspective of a little and very smart and inquiring child, although there's no violent scene on the movie the political tension is well expressed by the parents and friends, to the very confussion of the girl.. i don't remember her name, but her performance is outstanding, its very interesting how she interchange her wasys from childish feelings and behavour to thoughtful and even worried attitudes, being all the time very credible, the picture has a sad background, but the bright of the girl as the protagonist gives the element of hope, being the picture not sad but quite interesting and rich, with a lot of joyful funny moments. I really recommend this great movie.

"In any given festival," A.O. Scott of the NYTimes writes today from Berlin, "there is usually at least one movie that chronicles a time of political trauma from the point of view of a child." He goes on to say that at the Berlinale he's just seen one set in 1970 by Brazilian Cao Hamburger that "fits the bill nicely. In addition to politics and soccer, it has gentle sentiment, the stirrings of youthful sexuality and a grouchy, warmhearted old man." Blame It on Fidel (based on an Italian novel, Tutta colpa di Fidel, by Domitilla Calamai) is also about 1970-71 and deals with political events from a child's viewpoint, but the rest of its ingredients are different. The emphasis is far more on the child's intellectual development than on "political trauma." Gavras' film revolves around nine-year-old Anna (Nina Kervel) and her well-off bourgeois family living in France. Her father Fernando de la Mesa (Stefano Accorsi) is Spanish (from a rich Catholic royalist family, she learns later), and Fernando and wife Marie (Julie Depardieu), opposed to Franco, who Fernando's uncle is fighting in Spain, get excited about Allende's victory in Chile and woman's right to choose and things like that and decide to change their way of living. They leave their big house and move to a small apartment so Fernando can go to Chile and then "think." Marie keeps on doing articles for Marie-Claire to provide funds, but starts a documentary study on women and childbirth. Anna has to give up her nanny and she and her little brother François (Benjamin Feuillet) are minded by political refugees, first one from Greece, then one from Vietnam. At the insistence of Fernando, who's become liaison in France for Chilean activists, Anna is taken out of Divinity class at her private Catholic school.

Though there are lots of meetings in the little apartment now, the violent upheavals in society, even in Chile, only touch the family from afar, but what's fun and fresh about this appealing early-stages coming-of-age comedy is that Anna engages tooth and nail with the ideas her parents are indirectly imposing on her -- the importance of group action; the injustice of a market economy, etc. She thoroughly enjoyed the perks and rituals of a comfortable bourgeois life and Divinity was one of her best subjects. She thought her conservative grandparents (her mother's parents, heirs to a Bordeaux vineyard) had their own worthwhile ways of doing good. (And they did, but they didn't disturb the existing social order as Fernando's Chilean activist friends want to do.) At first, amusingly, the feisty, impulsive little François is better at adjusting to the changes, to sleeping in the same bedroom and eating exotic food prepared by their new nannies. In the end though, Anna has come to terms with the principle of change, and it's she who insists on being transferred to a secular school that's multicultural and free-wheeling, and she's happily joining in the play there at recess time as the film ends.

Former documentary filmmaker Gavras probably inherited her political awareness through her father, the Costa-Gavras of Z and State of Siege, but she's expressed a woman's point of view toward politics by choosing a subject that deals with their effect on a family. The film is bright and entertaining and has some good laughs. But it deserves extra credit for having a good head on its shoulders at all times. Rather than showing political events from a child's passive point of view, Blame It on Fidel deals with how children may be victimized by the ideas of their parents, even when those ideas are well-meaning and progressive. The film comes up with the startling revelation that a nine-year-old can seriously engage with issues like abortion and capitalism vs. communism.

To be shown in the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema at Lincoln Center March 7 and 10, March 4 and 6 at the IFO Center. Gaumont, opened in Paris November 29, 2006. No US distributor.

Set in the politically turbulent Paris of the1970s, "Blame it on Fidel" tells of a sheltered young girl who has her comfortable bourgeois existence ripped away from her after her staid, conformist parents (Julie Depardieu, Stefano Accorsi) suddenly become born again leftist radicals. Anna is forced to give up the home she loves and the nanny she adores when her father quits his job in order to dedicate himself full time to fighting for the proletariat against the repressive corporate powers of the world. The family moves from their spacious home in the country to a cramped apartment in the city, which is often filled with bearded revolutionaries who utter strange catch-phrases in barely audible whispers.

Thanks to a thoughtful script and sensitive direction, "Blame it on Fidel" manages to provide a compelling child's-eye view of the adult world. Incapable of grasping the "big picture" as her parents see it, Anna knows only that the family is now woefully short on cash (she runs around the house flipping off light switches and heaters to save electricity), and that her mother and father are so preoccupied with their "cause" that Anna and her little brother (the adorable, scene-stealing Benjamin Feuillet) seem to have been relegated to mere afterthoughts in their parents' tremendously busy lives. In a performance rich in insight and wisdom and utterly un-self-conscious in tone, nine-year-old Nina Kervel-Bey brings to life a character who often doesn't fully understand what's going on in the world around her but who never gives up trying to figure it all out. For a good part of the time, Anna is torn between childish curiosity and an indefinable sense of shame regarding her parents' newfound activities. Yet, through keen observation and endless questioning, and the eventual piecing together of the many unfiltered fragments that come floating her way, Anne is finally able to come to some kind of understanding, however imperfect, of the much larger world community of which she is only a very small but crucial part.

Despite the inherently ideological nature of the material, writer/director Julie Gavras, the daughter of famed filmmaker Costa-Gavras, keeps most of the political stuff in the background while she concentrates on the strain the grownups feel as they strive to juggle their save-the-world activities with their duties as parents.

Add to this some excellent performances by a talented cast and a rich, flavorful score by Armand Amar and "Blame it on Fidel" becomes a film well worth checking out. In this her second venture as a director, Ms. Gavras has done her old man proud.

What impressed me most about this film was how you always know what Anna is feeling. This is partly because of the wonderfully expressive actress playing the part, and partly because it is easy to recall how we felt about things as children and recognize how we would react to the clearly drawn situations of the film. It is also remarkable because while most French movies let you know what characters think simply by having them talk endlessly, Anna keeps her words short and to the point and the adults around her never seem to explain things as much as they ought to.

It is interesting to see how people here respond to the film. One review described it as a movie about adults balancing child raising with world saving, which is certainly a part of the film but to me wouldn't seem to be the focus. Someone else saw the film as an example of how activists can be bad parents.

But really, this film is so focused on Anna that I tended to feel whatever she was feeling, and as her feelings and understand evolved during the film, mind did as well. The movie feels very balanced, showing everyone's strengths and weaknesses, kindnesses and cruelties, honor and stupidity, and it feels very authentic; I don't know if this is fiction, a memoir or somewhere in between, but it feels very realistic and believable.

This is a quiet, thoughtful movie and it took me a while to get into it, perhaps simply because I approach French movies with a certain amount of suspicion, which is why I gave it a 7 instead of an 8. I became more and more drawn in as I watched, and found the final scenes especially touching. It's a lovely little film.