REVIEW: Farewell, the Week's Other Spy Film, Explores Human Toll of Espionage

Farewell, a cold war drama by the French director Christian Carion, isn't just a movie set in 1981; in many ways it feels like a movie made in 1981. Unflashy and unpretentious, laid out before us in a modest, slightly grayed-out Eastern Bloc color palette, the picture moves tentatively at first: It slumps into action, rather than springing into it. But scene by scene Carion, working from a true story, builds a spy story that focuses more on the human costs of betraying one's country than on the political fallout. To put it another way, if one man's leaking of a few maps and documents can precipitate the downfall of a country, just think what it could do to his family.

The movie is a fictionalized account of the Farewell Affair, a scheme in which a single KGB officer -- named Sergei Grigoriev in the film, and played by the Serbian actor and filmmaker Emir Kusturica -- leaked crucial information to foreign intelligence that would lead to the crumbling of the Soviet Union. Grigoriev chooses to bestow these documents, in bits and pieces, upon a French engineer stationed in Moscow, Pierre Froment (played by another actor-filmmaker hybrid, Guillaume Canet, director of the 2006 thriller Tell No One). Pierre has ties to French intelligence; still, he's none too happy to be the recipient of all these maps and diagrams and lists, fearing for the safety of his wife (played by Alexandra Maria Lara) and young children.

Presumably, he's also not too keen on the idea of landing in prison. Pierre is prickly, impatient, neurotic -- he's like a French Woody Allen, easily exasperated by anyone who threatens to disrupt his cozy routine. When Grigoriev dispatches him to France with some choice secrets, he asks if Pierre might bring back a few precious items from the West: He requests a Sony Walkman for his teenage son (Pierre has to decode what Grigoriev means when he says, "Johnny Walkman") and a book of French poetry for himself. "And some French toast?" Pierre shoots back. "I'm not a department store!"

That's the first indication that Pierre has a sense of humor, or even a personality, and it happens early enough that Farewell is able to recover from its ambling start. Carion (Joyeux Noel) focuses mostly on the grudging friendship that develops between the two men, as well as on the effect that Grigoriev's secret extracurricular activities have on his wife and son (played by Ingeborga Dapkunaite and Evgenie Kharlanov). Though there's a lot of ricocheting dialogue about Grigoriev's penchant for keeping secrets and telling lies within the household, Carion (who wrote the script, along with Eric Raynaud, based on a book by Sergey Kostine) effectively maps the emotional minefield that stands between radical patriotism and family harmony. Grigoriev explains to Pierre that he's leaking secrets because he loves his country and sees how desperately it needs to change; he yearns for that new, improved Russia for his son's sake. Meanwhile, the kid, as kids so often do, just tunes Grigoriev out when he tries to inquire about school or the day's events. Still, Carion isn't trading in heavy-handed irony about how little a parent's grand sacrifice can amount to; instead, he accepts the indifference of youth as a given. The idea is that adults who have seen lots of change in a lifetime have a greater understanding of the meaning -- and the cost -- of change.

As Farewell rounds to the finish, Carion offers a simple and economical climactic sequence that's suspenseful because it isn't excessively drawn out or overblown. (Plenty of other directors could learn something from it.) This is a story, obviously, in which one character's action affects the fate of nations, and Carion is mercifully succinct in the scenes in which the heads of state collect, digest and discuss the leaked information and what it means to them (they have no idea who Grigoriev is, and they certainly don't care what this information will cost him). These scenes also feature some wild and woolly bits of casting: My favorite is Fred Ward who appears, wearing a wrinkly, affable, scowl, as Ronald Reagan. (Willem Dafoe also shows up, briefly, as a heartless, by-the-numbers U.S. intelligence officer, and David Soul, of Starsky and Hutch fame, has a small role, too.)

But Farewell really belongs to Kusturica. (As a filmmaker, he may be best known for the 1995 Underground.) Kusturica's performance is modest and shaggy; his gait, heavy and bearlike, seems to embody what we stereotypically think of as the Russian soul. But Kusturica isn't just playing a type here: Sure, he suffers, for his family, for his country and mostly for his ideals. But Kusturica's performance is far from dour. There's a subterranean sensuality in it, too, and not just in the scenes in which Grigoriev flirts and dallies with a fellow KGB employee. When he offers the glint of a smile, or on the few occasions when he actually laughs, it's as if the heavens have broken open after a long, parched dry spell. In the movies, spies are often dashing, glamorous, wily characters -- that's part of why we love them. But Farewell gives us a different sort of spy, one who carries baggage in his heart and under his eyes. All of his secrets are right there, plain as day, in his face; and still, paradoxically, he'll never tell.