La faute à Fidel (Blame it on Fidel)

When we meet her first, Anna reminds us of a Spanish infanta in a Velasquez painting. We join her when she first becomes aware of the affairs of the world around her, when her father tells her that her aunt and cousin are to live with them in their Paris home. It is the early 1970s and the background is political unrest in Franco's Spain and Allende’s Chile, at the time of Chile’s general election of 1970. It transpires that Anna's parents, born into the upper class (her mother grew up in a castle with its own vineyard and her father's family are similar folk from a town near Toledo) are both political activists committed to social change. It is the effect of this political involvement on their young family's life, and on Anna and her younger brother, that is the principal subject of the film.

The film is subtly didactic, that is to say, the writer has a message to impart, and does so by transporting us back to those times when there was much social unrest in Europe. Audience members that have never participated in a mass demonstration, the likes of which were relatively frequent throughout the 1960s and 1970s in Europe and elsewhere, are reminded that the status quo is not immutable as we might think. Shown the behaviour of young idealist activists, such as Anna’s parents, many in audience might ask themselves whether they themselves are politically active enough.

The didacticism is too prominent on several occasions, lending several scenes an air reminiscent of a citizen’s information film (albeit an unusally well-presented one). I refer here to the classroom scene where Anna (and the audience) learns the distinction between "group solidarity" and “group think”. This scene is implausible because, prior this, Anna shows that she is not a “sheep”, but there is humour in Anna’s account of events, tearfully related later to her parents, when her misunderstanding of the mechanism of “group solidarity” is made clear. On another occasion, Anna plays at shopkeeping, and her parents' political friends and take the opportunity to try to make her question her emphasis on making a profit. One may argue that idealistic and naïve views are expressed during this scene, mainly by Anna’s interlocutors. Aside from these ethical subtexts, the sense that the politics are central to our lives pervades the film and is reflected by the multiple references to ancient Greece and Rome.

The metaphor of Anna, her young brother, and the children in the playground and in school, is powerful here, not least because, during the family scenes, one is struck by subtle reminders that Anna’s parents are children themselves. Communicating this sense is a triumph because of the power of the concept. Another admirable achievement is that characters are presented as human beings, first and foremost, and not simply characterised by their roles in society, e.g. lawyers or civil functionaries. The portrayal of the nuns in Anna’s school is one possible exception to that. The writer’ss attitude to Religion is not made clear and, in spite of Anna’s questioning mind, is one feature of her environment that is not explored.

We see many close ups of faces throughout, and many scenes of people expressing their ideas and experiences, with the former ultimately defining them and the latter shaping them. This is definitely a people-centric film, the unspoken message is to strive for “power to the people”. In the few external street scenes, the most common activity that people are depicted engaging in is simply that of walking and talking, the suggestion being that these activities might be the most important of all, an idea for which this film makes a persuasive case.

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