2007 Rendez-Vous with French Cinema: BLAME IT ON FIDEL (Faute à Fidel, La)

BLAME IT ON FIDEL
(La Faute à Fidel)

One of the biggest and most pleasant surprises of the 2006 Rendez-Vous
with French Cinema was BLAME IT ON FIDEL (LA FAUTE À FIDEL),
documentary filmmaker Julie Gavras' first fictional motion picture.
An adaptation of an Italian novel by Domitilla Calamai, Gavras and her
collaborator Arnaud Cathrine have moved the action from 1968 Italy to 1970
France.

The film's heroine is nine-year old Anna (the remarkable Nina Kerval-Bey),
whose parents, journalist mother Marie (Julie Depardieu) and Spanish-born
lawyer father Fernando (Stefano Accorsi), enjoy a comfortably bourgeois
existence. The arrival of Fernando's sister from Spain after the disappearance
and presumed death of her anti-Franco husband suddenly awakens the
political in both Marie and Fernando. They travel to Chile and return fired up
with renewed revolutionary passions. Soon, the family has moved from its
large home with a garden and Cuban housekeeper (who espouses the titular
philosophy and teaches Anna that Communists are not to be trusted) and
settle in a cramped apartment where Anna must share a room with her
younger brother François (Benjamin Feuillet). While her brother accepts the
changes in their lives with equanimity, Anna resists at every turn, especially
when her mother's parents wonder aloud if their daughter and her husband
have become Communists. Strong-willed, the youngster does get her parents
to capitulate to some of her demands, including remaining at a parochial
school, although her father insists that she no longer attend religious
instruction -- even though it is one of Anna's favorite classes. (She enjoys the
Creation story, among other things.)

The succession of housekeeper/nannies upsets her (although she enjoys
hearing each speak of the creation myths of their country) as does her
parents' frequent absences and their penchant for hosting gatherings of
Chilean refugees. There is an amusing scene wherein two of these men try to
convince Anna that her capitalist beliefs are wrong and she absolutely refuses
to budge.

The film beautifully captures the interplay between self-involved parents who
expect their children to embrace their beliefs and the free-thinking young girl
with a mind of her own. One troubling sequence has Marie and Fernando
taking their children to a protest march and Anna's steadfast and quizzical
reactions to the events unfolding around her. After the police deploy tear gas,
Anna remains fixed in place while everyone else runs away -- until her father
returns and spirits her to safety where they engage in a political discussion
that ends with her father clearly failing to understand her perspective.

Accorsi and Depardieu are terrific as the committed parents who often put
their beliefs and their work before their children. Young Benjamin Feuillet is
fine as the accommodating François, but the film rests solely on the shoulders
of Nina Kerval-Bey and the young actress delivers a masterful performance in
her first on screen role.

Gavras, whose father Constantine Costa-Gavras has made his share of
politically-themed movies, has written and directed a marvelous film that
points out just how children can absorb or reject the values of their parents. I
just wish the film had a better title, although BLAME IT ON FIDEL is the literal
translation of Calamai's novel.

Rating: B+

Nina Kervel-Bey as Anna de la Mesa in
Blame it on Fidel / La faute à Fidel
Julie Gavras, 2006; 99m

Photo Société des Etablissements L. Gaumont