“Farewell” – Director Christian Carion shifts his gaze from the trenches of World War I that he explored in 2005’s “Joyeux Noel,” to the backrooms of government spy agencies in the midst of the cold war, as “Farewell” drops us into the counterintelligence mission that led to the dismantling of the Soviet Union in the mid-1980s. Circling around a mole in the KGB, his contact – an engineer living in the French Residences in Moscow who gets caught up in passing the valuable documents to the French government – and the CIA, “Farewell” gets the arc of the story down even as it fails to raise the pulse. Carion’s film suffers from simplifying the roles of the power players, and neglecting to really illustrate how fragile the political networks really were. In Carion’s film, the Americans are mere opportunists, as a cowboy loving Ronald Reagan (he even watches a John Wayne film at one point) uses the delicate operations and revelations that come his way for his own political gain. The French play like they are caught in the middle of US demands and their contact, who wants out of the operation, while Sergei Gregoriev (Emir Kusturica), the mole, is rightly lauded for his bravery. Oddly, in this entire film, Gorbachev gets one scene and it’s only a brief one when it becomes apparent that the final days of the Soviet Union are at hand, while Mitterand gets a number of scenes that show him trying to navitgate the treacherous waters of the Oval Office. Carion is lucky that at the very least, his leads – the aforementioned Kusturica and Guillame Canet (as Pierre Froment, the French contact) – are great, often outpacing the slack script. There is an even better (and probably longer) film with this material but “Farewell” isn’t it. It adequately tells the story of one thread from what is a complicated ball of yarn that are the events, politics and conditions that led to the Soviet collapse. [B-]
“Erreur De La Banque En Votre Faveur” – This delightful comedy is truly a film for our times. Julien (Gerard Lanvin, who appears to be taking over from Gerard Depardieu and Daniel Auteil as the French actor who appears in every French film it seems) has worked for 17 years at an international bank as a maitre’d in their private dining room, serving all the top executives and their clients. With an impending layoff, he plans to use his severance to help fulfill a dream and open a restaurant with his friend Etienne (Jean-Pierre Darrousin). He approaches his soon-to-be former employer for a loan, and they turn him down saying that they don’t do personal loans. Upon their suggestion to visit his local banks, he does, who also subsequently turn him down saying he can’t guarantee they’ll get their money back. Frustrated, in his remaining days at the bank he decides to start eavesdropping on the lunch meetings, and use the insider trading info that the bigshots use to get rich to raise money for his restaurant. He tells Etienne, who tells someone else soon word leaks out around the neighborhood about Julien’s financial touch, everyone starts investing with him not just to get rich, but pay for the small things that make difference (a bigger house, bills etc). The film by writers and directors Gerard Bitton and Michael Munz bustles a rich and well defined supporting cast of characters that create a wonderful world for this irreverent and timely comedy. Yes, this is very much your standard comedy where the heroes will face a last minute, third act complication and will require one final “big score” to set things right, but it’s rare for a mainstream comedy to be this familiar and this fun. Even though we knew every beat that was coming, Bitton and Munz’s script and their tight, well timed direction knock this one out of park. “Erreur De La Banque En Votre Faveur” is a classic, big-hearted, David versus Goliath comedy that hits all the right (bank) notes. [A]
“Francaise” – The thoughtful first feature from director Souad El-Bouhati is an evocative look at cultural identity through the eyes of the children of immigrants. Sofia (“The Secret Of The Grain”‘s Hafsia Herzi) was born and grew up in France when at the age of 8, her parents, facing joblessness and financial trouble decide to move her, her sister and brother back to their homeland of Morocco. When the movie picks up again ten years later, her siblings and family have adapted well to Morocco, where they live and work on a thriving farm. However for Sofia, she longs to return to France setting off a struggle with her parents – who want her to stay and live a more traditional life in Morocco – who she needs to get her paperwork in order for her passport. Bouhati’s delicate touch allows for audiences to observe the numerous cultural and gender hurdles Sofia faces, without being judgmental of the differences between East and West. When the final act threatens to take a turn for the melodramatic, an elegant and enigmatic closing shot arrives like a glass cool water, and as Sofia walks into the distance, having moved on with her life somewhere in the not too distant future, the lingering camera wonders not only about the choices she made, but the ones she will have to make as well. [B+]
