Anna has spent the first 10 years or so of her life in comfort: Her family lives the upper-middle-class life in Paris, she goes to a private school.
But it’s the early 1970s, and her parents wake up suddenly to their radical selves. Her father (Stefano Accorsi), a Spaniard, can’t ignore the fascists running his native country, and her mother (Julie Depardieu) rejects her comfy bourgeois roots.
What does this mean for a little kid? We find out in “Blame it on Fidel,” a comedy that mixes politics with growing up.
Anna’s parents disappear for weeks to Chile, where they work to elect Salvador Allende. Soon their Paris apartment — a plainer, smaller place than their old one — is filled with Chilean radicals, some of whom act as surrogate parents to Anna and her brother.
For Anna, the changes in her existence are tracked by the changing nannies in the house. The family’s longtime Cuban nanny gets the boot after her rants against Castro and communists sound the wrong note.
Anna must then adjust to different ethnic foods in the household, after Greek and Vietnamese nannies come and go. Their unusual accounts of religion also clash with Anna’s Catholic schooling.
Director Julie Gavras plays this story for its comedy. After at a certain point I found myself irritated by the film’s amusement over Anna’s bewilderment — surely such changes might have been scary, too, for a kid this age. (Her little brother takes everything in stride, being younger and more adaptable.)
Gavras is the daughter of celebrated director Costa-Gavras, whose films are invariably political in nature. So perhaps she has first-hand knowledge of a politically active household.
She gets a wonderful performance from Nina Kervel as Anna. Kervel is one of those kid actors with an emotional dexterity far beyond her years.
This film scores its points, but they feel superficial in the end. However, Gavras gets enough details right — the way Anna is perpetually brushing her hair, for instance — to suggest she might graduate to a higher level someday.
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