Film: The Concert
Release date: 16th July 2010
Certificate: 15
Running time: 122 mins
Director: Radu Mihaileanu
Starring: Aleksei Guskov, Dimitri Nazarov, Melanie Laurent, François Berleand, Miou-Miou
Genre: Drama/Comedy
Studio: Optimum
Format: Cinema
Country: France/Italy/Romania/Belgium/Russia
Having both enjoyed award success and critical acclaim, the teaming of French director Radu Mihaileanu with lead actress Melanie Laurent was promising enough, before adding the wondrous music of Tchaikovsky into the mix.
Under the anti-Semitic Brezhnev regime, Andrei Filipov (Alexei Guskov) lost his prestigious position as conductor of the Bolshoi Orchestra as a punishment for refusing to expel Jewish musicians from the group.
Thirty years on, working as a cleaner at the theatre, he still dreams of taking up the baton once more, and when he finds out that the Bolshoi have been invited to play a concert in Paris, he keeps the news to himself and hatches a plan to take his own orchestra instead.
To this end, he has to reconnect with all the musicians he knew back in the day, getting them to dust off their old instruments and polish up their playing skills. He also has to enlist the help of his old adversary, Ivan Gavrilov (Valeri Barinov), the Communist party activist responsible for Filipov’s humiliating fall from grace, who agrees to go along with the scheme, as he has his own agenda.
Against all odds, the orchestra manages to get to Paris, where the talented violinist Anne-Marie Jacquet (Melanie Laurent) is persuaded to play Tchaikovsky and help heal the wounds of the past...
Mustering a motley crew of Russian musicians with rusty skills to perform at a top venue in Paris is a premise with plenty of comic potential – even if the idea that they can make beautiful music together at the drop of a hat is a bit far-fetched. Still, if you can manage to suspend disbelief and go with the flow, it’s easy enough to be swept away by the enthusiasm and energy of this unlikely ensemble.
Cultural differences between the unruly mob of Slavs and their more sophisticated French hosts play a large part in the humour, and director Radu Mihaileanu highlights the contrast by using fixed camera shots to illustrate Parisian elegance, while hand-held cameras follow the frenetic antics of the Russians.
The cast of characters include an elderly trombonist, who insists that his asthma actually improves his playing, and a gipsy violinist who is particularly well-accomplished on the fiddle, with a sideline in arranging fake passports for orchestra members who need them in a hurry. The character-generated humour works up to a point, occasionally treading a fine line between comic exaggeration and racial stereotyping. Scenes where the Russians speak in faltering French present a particular challenge, as the comic touch runs the risk of becoming lost in translation.
Alexei Guskov, a seasoned veteran of the East European movie scene, with forty films under his belt, gives an earnest and likeable performance as conductor Andrei Filipov, though he comes across as more of a straight man than a natural comedian. His admiration of the violinist Jacquet is such that he keeps all her CDs and press clippings in a folder. A trail of clues seems to suggest a father-daughter relationship, but this is something of a red herring, as the past connection between the pair is not quite so obvious.
Melanie Laurent, best known to an international audience for her role as Shosanna Dreyfuss in Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds, has a luminous screen presence as the virtuoso violinist who is haunted by the music of Tchaikovsky - for reasons she cannot quite fathom. Laurent, who is left-handed, learnt to play the violin for the part, a daunting task as the instrument cannot be converted and must be played be right-handed, so she ended up with tendonitis. Bravo: her playing looks authentic enough and no-one can say she isn’t prepared to suffer for her art.
While the challenge of playing a cool and self-controlled character appears to place constraints on her emotional range at times, she is finally able to give her feelings full expression in the climactic scene, when Jacquet faces her fears to perform Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto for the first time.
The score combines original music by Armand Amar with the sublime harmonies of Tchaikovsky, a fine blend in keeping with the musical theme. Mihaileanu neatly ties up loose ends in the highly-charged final scene, interspersing highlights of the concert with flashbacks telling the fate of the Jewish musicians from three decades earlier, while flash forwards show the orchestra on a world tour following their success in Paris.
The message that reverberates through to the final chord is that people’s lives can be transformed, at least temporarily, through the shared experience of music, which crosses barriers of language and culture to achieve harmony and perfection. The fine performances from the players in this concert may merit a round of applause, but the transcendental music of Tchaikovsky is the star. AL
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