FAREWELL
Directed by Christian Carion
Produced by Christian Carion
Written by Eric Raynaud, based on the novel Bonjour Farewell  by Serguei Kostine
Released by NeoClassics Films
French, English & Russian with English subtitles
France. 113 min. Not Rated
With Emir Kusturica, Guillaume Canet, Alexandra Maria Lara, Ingeborga Dapkunaite, Dina Korzun, Evgenie Kharlanov, Fred Ward, Aleksey Gorbunov & Willem Dafoe
 

Though Farewell is a film about a Russian spy, it isn’t quite a spy story with all the tense and thrilling trimmings that define the genre. The topography of emotions and human relationships mostly trump the docudrama content of this strained French endeavor, and the result is, for the most part, neither very mysterious nor very insightful.

The tale of Vladimir Vetrov is a killer premise that certainly begs for celluloid glory: a turncoat KGB agent who reveals a crushing amount of top-secret Soviet information to the French in the 1980s. The clumsy, almost crazy actions of one disaffected agent (rechristened as Colonel Gregoriev in the film) amounted to a devastating moment of espionage in the Cold War, with information passed from Francois Mitterrand to Ronald Reagan, resulting in the discovery of 47 Soviet spies on our side of the curtain. That the files went through the hands of a French engineer (charmingly played by Guillaume Canet) roped into the dangerous affair by his boss makes the real-life narrative even more compelling. 

Far from a Bourne Identity treatment that feeds on these real twists and turns, director Christian Carion unfurls the fascinating details in a restrained and pensive fashion with shaky dips into poetic foreshadowing—images of dogs and wolves pop up as stolid metaphors. Carion tries to paint a considered portrait of communist life in ’80s Moscow, but instead of achieving a heady zeitgeist, the scenes feel like lifeless lists of Soviet memorabilia: a tank, a statue, school children in bright red scarves.

It’s almost an impressive act of directorial folly that the strong cast—including Emir Kusturica (director of Black Cat/White Cat) as Gregoriev, Willem Dafoe as an FBI agent, and Niels Arestrup, the Corsican mafioso from A Prophet (Un prophète)—manage mostly lackluster performances. It doesn’t help that Kusturica delivers his few Russian lines with a heavy accent, a small but distracting detail. 

The risky decision to portray prominent world figures is a comical failure with Reagan (treated as irreverently as Bush in W) but a surprising triumph when it comes to Gorbachev, smartly played by an actor with an almost curious likeness. The other notable exception to the weak performances is the full-bodied character of Gregoriev’s son (Evgenie Kharlanov), who breathes life into each of his scenes.

It’s unfortunate that the operation, named “Farewell” in English, to take the focus off the French should the Russians ever discover it, has faded from public consciousness. Perhaps it’s more unfortunate that this film will do little to reignite our curiosity. Yana Litovsky
July 23, 2010