Summary
Set in 1970, Blame It on Fidel is a wry and engaging look at how personal the political becomes in the life of one nine-year old girl. Fernando (Stefano Acorsi) and Marie (Julie Depardieu) are left-leaning and very comfortable middle-class, when a trip to Latin America convinces both to dedicate themselves full-time to the many causes they've only verbally supported, to the consternation of their daughter, Anna (Nina Kerval). Full of wonderful historical asides and period detail, Blame It on Fidel is about that moment when parents realize that their children are their own separate selves - and the moment when children discover the same thing about their parents.
Summary
When her wealthy parents are suddenly motivated to take an overtly political stance as massive political and economical change sweeps through France, the daughter of a wealthy Spanish lawyer and a successful French journalist attempts to make sense of her once-stable world as everything she thought she ever knew is turned upside down. Anna (Nina Kervel) is a nine-year-old Catholic schoolgirl who excels in catechism class and knows how to hold a knife and fork while cutting her fruit. Her father, Fernando (Stefano Accorsi), comes from a prominent Spanish family and her mother, Marie (Julie Depardieu), is a well-known writer for a popular French women's magazine. Also sharing the family's sprawling home is Anna's younger brother, François (Benjamin Feuillet). When the increasing militancy of Fernando's communist sister begins to pose a threat to the family, the concerned brother stealthily travels to Spain and successfully smuggles his sister back into France. Fully indoctrinated in the belief that all communists are bad, Anna struggles to understand why, after returning from a trip to Latin America, her parents seem to have developed a strong social conscience. Meanwhile, as the thunderous footsteps of eager revolutionaries begin to echo through the hallways and mom begins to prepare a book protesting the illegality of abortion, Anna does her best to adapt to the strange new environment. The fiction feature debut of filmmaker Julie Gavras (daughter of celebrated filmmaker Costa), Blame It on Fidel! playfully covers the year in which the death of Charles De Gaulle, the election of Salvador Allende, and a landmark petition signed by 300 French women admitting to undergoing illegal abortions altered the way many Europeans viewed the world. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi