There are quite a few sly observations in Farewell, directed by Christian Carion, which deals with France's part in the downfall of the mighty Russian empire.
La Republique is represented by a skittish family man, Pierre (Guillaume Canet), complete with nerdish specs and beard. However, there is nothing iffy about his wife, a former East German beauty who has a somewhat better idea of what communism can do to your grey matter.
But then it is French culture that seduces Sergei Grigoriev and probably convinces him to help bring the empire to its knees. Played by the genius director, Emir Kusturica, who has rightly been called a tender barbarian by a French critic, he lugs his large frame fatalistically through this story.
But the mind is playing a typical game of chess and Sergei is constantly quoting a poem by Alfred de Vigny on the same theme: sacrifice. So what if you have to sacrifice a pawn for the greater good of seeing the game won? So what if the male wolf has to distract and then get savaged by the hunting hounds in order for its litter to get away safely?
How can a Westerner possibly understand that Sergei does not wish to be paid, apart from a few French comforts, for what he believes in? How would they ever understand that he still believes in the basic, humanist tenets of socialism?
Another clever reference concerns Kusturica himself, watching home movies with the silhouette of a film reel against his smoking face; as well as directing other, grimmer matters. No angel, his character is having an affair (how French, even if he Russian) and his teenage son despises him for not just working in a world of lies but living those lies.
Furthermore, Ronald Reagan is portrayed as the vain but not entirely stupid leader he was by Fred Ward, constantly watching his ham acting in one of his old bad films.
Yet the film is everything but a comedy. It perfectly captures - and that is the appropriate word here - the icy uncertainty of the Cold War era and the sunny backwardness of life in the glorious Motherland.
Neil Sonnekus
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