Blame it on Fidel

I've been enjoying the Los Angeles Film Festival recently. The diversity of films here is staggering. I watched a screening of "The Elephant and the Sea", a very contemplative, slow-moving, ultra low-budget narrative film from a young Malaysian director, while "The Transformers" had it's premier just a few blocks away. Two very different movies. Same festival. In fact, the amount of foreign films (shorts, documentaries and otherwise) is massive here which befits L.A., a culturally diverse Mecca whose perception can be unjustly overshadowed by it’s “Hollywood” fluff and glamour.

Prior to the Malaysian dreamscape movie, I saw "Blame it on Fidel" or "Faute a Fidel" the charming French offering set in early 1970s Paris. I highly recommend this movie. It's one of those gems that welcomes the viewer completely. In fact, I didn't want the movie to end. I felt honored to be a part of this unique, sympathetic and loving French family. The story centers around a young girl named Anna, whose parents communist awakening sets off her own tempered chaos. Mickey Mouse a fascist? No more divinity class? Allende? Marco? There’s a lot here for a nine year old to take on.

What is most charming about this film is the character of Anna. So often I find that children are written poorly in film - either too much like an adult, or completely devoid of emotion (Like the film "Joshua" that also showed at the Festival - after all, aren't sociopath children still...children?). Anna is excellently drawn as an inquisitive child growing up. She is spoiled and stubborn, as well as loving and adorable. Her inquisitiveness is most endearing. Her thirst for knowledge and comprehension of the world around her is quenchless as she tries to fit in all this new information within the framework of her life. Her mind and sharp tongue don't even rival those of the strange bearded communist activists who harbor at her family’s apartment at all hours of the night. What other nine year old can have an earnest discussion of economics, inflation, and Marxism besides Anna de la Mesa?

Anna's growing understanding with a new term brought forth by her parents' ideology - "group solidarity" – produces one of the film’s most thoughtful exchanges. Anna tries to implement her parent’s “group solidarity” slogan in her classroom, when she decides, albeit reluctantly, to join the rest of her Catholic school classmates in raising her head and answering the teacher's question incorrectly. She knows the right answer, but decided to join the rest. The result? She wonders whether "group solidarity" is synonymous with the sheep following the sheep.

The last showing of "Blame it on Fidel" is on Thursday, June 28 at theLandmark's Regent in Westwood. Highly recommended.