Blame It on Fidel.

"Adapted from an Italian novel by Domitilla Calamai, this delightful debut feature from Julie Gavras (daughter of filmmaker Costa-Gavras) observes a comfy bourgeois couple (Julie Depardieu and Stefano Accorsi) in early-70s Paris and their abrupt ideological awakening to Communist militancy through daughter Anna's curious, opinionated, innocently conservative viewpoint," writes Aaron Hillis in the Voice.

"The temptation to call Blame It on Fidel formulaic - with its restrained technique and relaxed rhythm - is easy, but the film's uncanny observations can't be easily dismissed," writes Paul Schrodt at Slant. "This is not a film about politics strained through a child's eyes; this is more a film about childhood, strained through the tumult of politics.... In its own, slight way, Blame It on Fidel is a work of everyday realism on par with The Best of Youth. Like that film, it profoundly connects a family's heartache to the tears in a country's social fabric."

Updated through 8/3.

Gavras not only "captures the spirit of the time," notes Marcy Dermansky, she also "creates an intimate look at the struggles of family: meals and bedtime, sharing a bathroom, the fast flare-ups, the resolutions, the small day-to-day moments, building one after the other, until Anna accepts home as it is, not as it was, and then, miracle of miracle, she smiles. It's ridiculously charming."

"A wrenching, funny and wise little picture, with a diva-like junior star at its center," writes Salon's Andrew O'Hehir.

In the New York Press, Eric Kohn finds it "suffers from an acute case of cuteness.... It's not a terrible idea, nor a bad movie, but Anna's perception dampens the extent to which each development manages to provoke interesting ideas."

"The tension between a budding bourgeois child, who uses a knife and fork to cut her fruit, and parents who travel to Allende's Chile as foot soldiers in a revolution, promises fertile dramatic possibilities that the film allows us to glimpse only briefly as it teeters between sentiment and sanctimony," writes Jason Bogdaneris in the L Magazine.

For Filmmaker, Nick Dawson talks with Gravas "about being part of a filmic dynasty, the frustration of working with child actors, and an unfortunate teenage experience involving Bo Derek."

Earlier: "Rendez-Vous. 9."

Updates, 8/3: "Blame It on Fidel is not the pie-in-the-sky paean to its do-gooders that you might expect from the daughter of the left-wing filmmaker Costa-Gavras," writes Stephen Holden in the New York Times. "Though sympathetic to Fernando and Marie's sudden left turn, the movie is equally sympathetic to Anna, who, with her younger brother, François (Benjamin Feuillet), is dragged along on her parents' political odyssey."

"Not light enough to be farce, not exacting enough to be anthropology, Gavras's film is content to walk a tentative middle line throughout, the same one her characters eye warily, only crossing occasionally, and even then begrudgingly," writes Jeff Reichert at indieWIRE.

At the AV Club, Noel Murray gives Fidel a "B."

Posted by dwhudson at August 2, 2007 10:02 AM