Blame it On Fidel

Blame it on Fidel is the story of what happens to a family when some of its members become radicalized. The clever twist here is that it is the parents who abandon all to join the radical fringes of the early 70's -- to the bewilderment and chagrin of their arch-conservative nine year old, Anna.

The movie opens onto a scene of bourgeois bonheur at the estate home of a successful French lawyer. Here, and indeed throughout the movie, we are reminded in casual but unmistakable ways that the French perfected civilization.

They have been at it since the days of Ausonius, I thought, as the senses of memory revived the joys of le petite dejuner and a dish of peas.

But for reasons which are not entirely clear to us -- and certainly not to Anna -- her parents do a social volte face and (needless to say) everything gets turned upside down. Well cut and mannered gentil bourgeois are replaced with voluble, chain smoking "bearded reds" -- from Chile of all places -- as Anna's parents give up their home and lawns for crowded digs in an apartment. Haricot verts get replaced with strange foreign mushes, which Anna eyes suspiciously.

Most seriously yet, Anna's tenure at her Catholic school is threatened, although she is allowed to stay on condition she be excused from Catechism, in lieu of which she is dragged off to Sunday morning protest marches. "What is the difference," Anna asks incisively, "between "Solidarity" and "Following like Sheep"?

The brilliance of all this, is that we are made to see things from unconventional angles. We know that Pinochet is in the wings, and yet we are seeing the Reactionary Right from the perspective of a determined but helpless child, who has "political" issues of her own with her classmates.

Without the slightest hint of didacticism, Directory Julie Gavras whimsically lays out a series of symmetries -- "counterpoint" is too Germanic a word -- that in the end would have us consider politics as a question of character rather than "rational choice".

As Anna takes weekend refuge at her grand-parents' Bordeaux chateau winery where, with all decent kindness, certain things are never discussed, Anna's mother interviews unwed mothers and publishes a scandal-triggering book on the effects of France's abortion laws.

In two epigramatically perfect scenes, Gavras co-reflects the virtues and limitations of education at the hands of nuns and at the equal but -- is it really opposite? -- insistence of bearded communists. Perhaps they are just different affectations of morality?

Or perchance taste in heroes? On the announcement of DeGaulle's death, Anna's grandfather stares out the window and murmurs "It is all over". We don't need to hear what Anna's father feels as, several scenes later, he too stares silently into the unseen landscape beyond his window.

Or perhaps simply species of complacency and regret? In the end, Anna insists on going to Spain where she discovers some surprising things about her radical father and gets a sense of true and irredentist reaction unsoftened by French refinement.

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