August 2009

L’affaire Farewell (Director: Christian Carion): It’s the early 1980s and KGB col­onel Serguei Grigoriev (Emir Kusturica) knows that the Soviet system isn’t working. He wants change, and so he decides to set events in motion that might sweep him away, but will benefit his teen­aged son. He makes con­tact with Pierre Froment (Guillaume Canet), a young French engineer working for an elec­tronics com­pany in Moscow. Froment is not a spy but his boss “does favours” for France’s internal intel­li­gence, and Grigoriev feels that Froment will be above sus­pi­cion. Over Froment’s ini­tial prot­est­a­tions, he begins passing him doc­u­ments which expose the KGB’s intimate know­ledge of the West’s mil­itary and intel­li­gence struc­tures. Froment reluct­antly passes these on when he travels back to France, and soon the two men are locked in an intimate and dan­gerous friendship.

Both men love their wives and chil­dren, but this love drives Grigoriev to take risks while Froment seeks to avoid them. As the inform­a­tion gets into the hands of more and more senior players, the danger grows. Newly-elected French pres­ident Miterrand passes the inform­a­tion to US pres­ident Reagan, hoping to paper over the men’s ideo­lo­gical dif­fer­ences. As Reagan and his CIA dir­ector Feeney (Willem Dafoe) begin to realize how much of their own intel­li­gence has been com­prom­ised, they are eager to find out who this Russian, code­named “Farewell” is.

The best thing about the film is that it is not a typ­ical guns-blazing action movie. We see both of these men with their wives and chil­dren, dealing with their own demons as they are forced to deceive and con­ceal for what they hope will be the greater good. For this reason, the ten­sion rises without any editing trickery or musical cues. We realize just how deep a trap Grigoriev and Froment have gotten them­selves into, and while the Russian has always seemed ready to pay the price, his accom­plice protests at every step, even while he con­tinues his work.

While there are no real sur­prises around the con­clu­sion of the whole affair, Carion keeps us riv­eted right to the very end. Helping immeas­ur­ably are the able per­form­ances of the two leads, espe­cially Kusturica, much better-known as a film dir­ector. Here he plays Grigoriev as a sort of Russian Depardieu, a bear-like man who also hap­pens to be a ded­ic­ated Francophile. Grigoriev was posted to Paris for five years and is always asking Froment to bring him back things from France: cham­pagne, cognac, records and poetry. It makes it all the more sad when he refuses Froment’s advice to defect with his family.

Carion has also recre­ated the time and place with incred­ible care. The old cars, the Stalinist archi­tec­ture, even the bootleg Queen cas­sette that Grigoriev’s son is always listening to; all con­tribute to the atmo­sphere of a country hoping for change but fearing the future. Adding to the film’s appeal is Carion’s decision to have dia­logue spoken in Russian, French, and English according to the char­acter. The pres­ence of both the French and American “Western” per­spect­ives also gives the film more depth than the typ­ical US vs USSR dynamic in many sim­ilar films. I sin­cerely hope this helps L’affaire Farewell break out of France and make some waves in the rest of the world, espe­cially in the North American market. This smart and well-acted film deserves a wide audience.

Official site of the film (French)

(8/10)

Tagged as: #tiff09, espionage, france, sovietunion, ussr

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