Blame it on Fidel
Directed by Julie Gavras
The quaint period piece, Blame it on Fidel, suffers from an acute case of cuteness. Set in France during the major political upheaval taking place around the world in 1970, it explores social activism through the eyes of inquisitive nine-year-old Anna (Nina Kervel), whose father (Stefano Accorsi) rallies for redistribution of wealth in Chile, while her mother (Julie Depardieu, and yes, her father is iconic French performer Gerard) pushes women’s abortion rights.
Further complicating matters, the couple choose to host their communist relatives after they escape from Spain. Loaded with character details and plot, Fidel nonetheless unfolds entirely from Anna’s miniaturized perspective, which eventually turns into a gimmick that limits the story’s potential. Debuting director Julie Gavras wants us to accept a child’s perspective as the governing rule, thus inadvertently justifying the simplification of colossal historical elements implied by that unique vantage point.
It’s not a terrible idea, nor a bad movie, but Anna’s perception dampens the extent to which each development manages to provoke interesting ideas. The final shot suggests that a girl of her age fares better by retreating into the juvenile exuberance of playground obliviousness, extinguishing the possibility that her encounters with angry, soulful adults intent on performing surgery on the world’s greatest social woes actually impacted her in any progressive manner. To Gavras’ credit, an earlier scene (and a few others like it) demonstrate Anna’s sincere attempts to step up to the realm of humanistic woes: Her father gazes out the window, evidently crestfallen, and she reaches for his hand, consoling him. The moment is effective because it represents a universality of pathos that drives the earnestness necessary for activism to survive. Fidel could have benefited from more moments like this one to enliven its conceits.
Taking the youth angle to analyze large-scale conflict has succeeded before. British director Shane Meadows’ This is England explores the early 1980s skinhead mentality through the anger and confusion of a 12-year-old. Francois Truffaut’s classic, The 400 Blows, uses the despair of failing marriage as the main contributing factor to a child’s prepubescent anguish. But neither of those great works adopts a literal approach to the protagonist’s age; events unfold through conventional dialogue scenes and the like. Fidel, however, frequently uses odd framing strategies that result in adult characters having the tops of their bodies cut off—an annoying technique that condescends to viewers and, at times, to the endearing heroine.
But Gavras has undeniable skill as a screenwriter, suggesting that the production might have benefited from a more experienced helmer. My favorite scene involves a handful of activists trying to teach Anna about the redistribution of wealth with the division of an orange as the principal metaphor. It’s a satisfying exchange: As an effort to put things into terms so that Anna can understand them, it feels noble. A whole movie could be structured around such lessons—or, rather, a whole fruit salad.
