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A political film that's from the heart
18 October 2007
Nine-year-old Anna (Nina Kervel) is a prissy Parisian with an electrifying scowl. It's 1970 and the murder of her communist Spanish uncle propels her guilt-ridden bourgeois parents (Stefano Accorsi and Julie Depardieu) into joining "la revolution". Anna's little brother goes with the flow; Anna does not.
Taken on an anti-Franco march by her parents, she elbows a fellow "comrade"-with vicious fury. "Did I hurt you?" says the bewildered man. Anna just shrugs. She's suffering, why shouldn't he?
While the script is based on a novel by Italy's Domitilla Calamai, this stuff obviously comes from director Julie Gavras's heart. Her dad is the Left-wing film-maker Costa Gavras, her mother an equally zealous film producer. I guarantee that she, like Anna, was once baby-sat by nervy politicos.
But there's no time to think about such personal politics whilst watching Blame It on Fidel - Anna's emotional odyssey is simply too engrossing, with a sub-plot about the assassination of Chile's Allende especially affecting.
A few episodes are slightly cartoonish, but for the most part, scenes move with the blind-siding, quick-slow rhythms of real life. The sets and costumes strike just the right note. The acting - especially Kervel's - is spookily good.
Blame It On Fidel (La Faute A Fidel)
Cert: 12A
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