Directed by Julie Gavras (daughter of Costa-Gavras), this tells the story of a young, nine year-old girl in early 1970s Paris. Born of a well-to-do family, and used to bourgeois comforts, she reacts angrily when her parents become radicalized by events in Franco’s Spain and Allende’s Chile, and by the women’s liberation movement. The movie watches and evaluates the parents through the eyes of the girl, Anna (played by an impressive Nina Kervel-Bey). Not a great film, primarily because the parents’ are never believable, either as radicals or parents, and because the trajectory of the film is too obvious, as Anna softens to the revolution, questions her catholic nun teachers, and comes to like the “beatnik-hippy” friends that her parents make in their solidarity work. It lacks the hard edge of Costa-Gavras’s films, exploring the human reaction to great events rather than the events themselves. Still, it is an affecting film, if only because these were genuinely momentous events going on, and to live through them was to be transformed. As soon as I finished watching I found good versions of ‘Ay Carmela’, ‘Hasta Siempre’ and ‘Bella Ciao’ to download and listen to. It could almost have been the 1970s again.
I just thought I should add — Johnny To.