Plantiana Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

Acensbart Excellent but underrated film

AutCuddly Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

Tymon Sutton The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Roedy Green This movie is subtle, well made and undoubtedly good for your soul, like broccoli. However, like broccoli, it can be a bit too bland and boring. You get to watch a child's life through the child's eyes. Her trials are not major and she handles them without major drama. The lead is a child actress Nina Kervel-Bey. Her part is quite unusual. She is not adorable or endearing. She is not a brat. She is not a ninny. She is not a waif. She is intelligent, but not freakily precocious. She is admirably stubborn and independent. Just as in real life, the adults don't notice how aware she is of all that is going on and talk down to her. She listens in all the time on adult conversations. I recall as a preschooler sitting on the floor while adults had conversations that I was sure they did not want me to hear. As long as I did not move, it seemed for them I did not exist or that they presumed I was incapable of understanding what they were saying. Films and books nearly always underestimate children. It is as if the authors can't remember what it was like, and go for a Disneyfied haze over the lens making children into happy idiots. This movie does not make that error. Steffano Accorsi plays the father. He was also in one of my favourite movies of all time My Secret Life/Ignorant Fairies where he plays a similar warm gentle character.

paul2001sw-1 In this movie, a young girl's parents start moving in radical circles; and as this means giving up some of her privileges, she doesn't like it. But she's a natural free-thinker (though not yet a rebel), which causes her to question authority on both sides of the political divide. There are some nice observations, but the overall film didn't quite work for me: for example, it ends with the death of Salvador Allende and his last, heroic speech, a story that is great and terrible, but it's hard to believe it would be defining for the character. There are small things to enjoy here, but the film never altogether moves beyond its basic premise.

Charles Herold (cherold) What impressed me most about this film was how you always know what Anna is feeling. This is partly because of the wonderfully expressive actress playing the part, and partly because it is easy to recall how we felt about things as children and recognize how we would react to the clearly drawn situations of the film. It is also remarkable because while most French movies let you know what characters think simply by having them talk endlessly, Anna keeps her words short and to the point and the adults around her never seem to explain things as much as they ought to.It is interesting to see how people here respond to the film. One review described it as a movie about adults balancing child raising with world saving, which is certainly a part of the film but to me wouldn't seem to be the focus. Someone else saw the film as an example of how activists can be bad parents.But really, this film is so focused on Anna that I tended to feel whatever she was feeling, and as her feelings and understand evolved during the film, mind did as well. The movie feels very balanced, showing everyone's strengths and weaknesses, kindnesses and cruelties, honor and stupidity, and it feels very authentic; I don't know if this is fiction, a memoir or somewhere in between, but it feels very realistic and believable.This is a quiet, thoughtful movie and it took me a while to get into it, perhaps simply because I approach French movies with a certain amount of suspicion, which is why I gave it a 7 instead of an 8. I became more and more drawn in as I watched, and found the final scenes especially touching. It's a lovely little film.

guy-bellinger Julie Gavras is famous politically committed director Costa-Gavras'daughter and it shows. But be reassured "La faute à Fidel", her first fiction film (coming after a pair of interesting documentaries) isn't a carbon copy of a Costa Gavras movie in any way. It is much more exciting than just that in that it examines thoroughly the pros and the cons of leftist involvement, mainly its negative repercussions on family life.The plot revolves around little nine-year-old Anna( played to perfection by tense, brooding, occasionally warming to a welcome smile Nina Kervel), whose life is turned upside down when her parents abruptly change from well-to-do upper middle class people to leftist activists, with a feminist inclination concerning the mother. The whole film will describe the difficulties of a little girl who loses all of her privileges out of the blue, how she understandably rebels against such injustice (even rich kids have a cause to defend!) and who very slowly gets to understand her parents' choices, eventually coming to terms with the situation and growing mature (more mature than the standard brat) in the process.The movie really charmed me from the beginning to the end, ringing true all the time (the early seventies are well captured, whether when it comes to the production values or the depiction of the mentalities of the time). And Julie Gavras knows her subject on the tip of her fingers. Her parents – just like Anna's ones – have always been leftist activists and wasn't her dwelling-place invaded by Chilean "barbudos" while her dad was preparing "Missing"?The viewers share her empathy for the central character and appreciate her refusal to resort to caricature. Of course Anna's grandparents are "grand bourgeois" but they are not horrible persons. On the other hand, a leftist activist is not perfect by definition. Those ambiguities give depth to the characters and make them believable throughout. And Julie Gavras has a knack for unexpected details enhancing the viewer's interest and involvement in the story. I was particularly amused by such features as Anna adoring her catechism class, the presence of a violently anticommunist Cuban domestic worker (hence the title), the succession of nannies exiled from different countries torn by ideological conflicts, Anna singing "Ay, Carmela!" to protest against her parents quarreling and many others.All in all, a wonderful initiation movie that augurs well for Julie Gavras' future career.