Young Nina Kervel makes an astonishing screen debut as a Parisian schoolgirl who loses her bearings when her parents plunge headlong into radical politics. Knowing that this adaptation of Domitilla Calamai's novel Tutta Colpa di Fidel was written and directed by the daughter of filmmaker Costa-Gavras, best known for such popular, politically charged films as Z (1969), STATE OF SIEGE (1973) and MISSING (1982), only makes this sharp and charming film all the more poignant.
Paris, 1970. Nine-year-old Anna's (Kervel-Bey) life of bourgeois comfort comes to an unexpected end after her parents, Marie (Julie Depardieu) and Fernando (Stefano Accorsi), take a trip to Chile, where Socialist politician Salvador Allende is campaigning to become the country's next president. Marie and Fernando return to Paris with knit caps for Anna and her younger brother, Francois (Benjamin Feuillet), and a whole new vision for their lives: They're going to devote themselves to the struggle of oppressed peoples everywhere. Descended from an old, pro-Franco family, Fernando is needled by guilt over having fled Spain while his anti-fascist sister (Raphaelle Molinier) and brother fought and, in his brother's case, died, for freedom. Having sat out the revolutionary Parisian spring of 1968 to earn a law degree and start a family, Fernando is now ready to make amends as only a late convert can: He quits his job at a cushy law firm and dives into radical causes. Marie, meanwhile, scandalizes her own conservative family by taking up feminist causes and channels her long-simmering frustration with writing puff pieces for Marie-Claire into collecting testimony from women who've had abortions. No longer able to afford their grand suburban home on the outskirts of Paris, Fernando moves his family into a cramped apartment that's soon filled with cigarette smoke, late-night revolutionary rhetoric, and a never-ending stream of bearded strangers and weeping women. Gone are their garden, divinity classes at the Catholic school where Anna's parents have grudgingly allowed her to remain, and, above all, housekeeper Filomena (Marie-Noelle Bordeaux), an embittered refugee from Castro's Cuba who has instilled in Anna a fear of communists. Gone also is all sense of security and stability Anna once took for granted.
Julie Gavras' excellent adaptation and sensitive direction means that Anna's journey toward understanding the radical change her parents have undergone corresponds with her growing awareness of adult fallibility and the true nature of the world outside the garden walls. In one extraordinary sequence shot at waist-level on a Paris street during a demonstration turned riot, Gavras beautifully conveys the confusion, powerlessness and fear every child feels. In a matching scene later in the film, also shot from Anna's eye level, a party on the eve of Chilean elections reveals that Anna's world has become a friendlier, if not entirely understandable, place. But the glue holding it all together is Kervel, a strikingly self-possessed young actress who delivers a beautifully nuanced performance. Watch your back, Dakota Fanning. leave a comment --Ken Fox