Artivels Undescribable Perfection

Steineded How sad is this?

Lightdeossk Captivating movie !

Stoutor It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

Gerhard Stoltz I had some previous knowledge of the Farewell-affair, so i came in knowing pretty much what to expect. On the whole they seemed to pull it off pretty well. The one thing that did grate me though were the scenes with Ronald Reagan in them. The acting and dialogue in those are way under par for the movie and seriously impacted my enjoyment of the rest of it.But yeah. If you want the reverse Snowden then this is the movie for you. The pacing is all right. It is not horribly complicated, as far as spy thrillers go.A tense dropoff here, an escape here, some exposition of character motivation, some family drama, a whiff of secrecy and an outcome which is never in doubt.

hope less Farewell is a spy drama set in Moscow/Russia in the early 1980's. It stars Guillaume Canet and Emir Custarica, both noted directors in their own rights.It is based on real events with the basic story correct though the nature of the two leading characters and a few events are somewhat changed or omitted.The plot centres around the leaking of Russian intelligence to the French government. Sergei (Canet) works for the Russian secret service but has been recruited by (or volunteered to) the French government to pass intelligence data from his office. Sergei is doing this for purely moral reasons arguing that it will one day bring the system down and give his son a better future. His contact is a French engineer working in Moscow, Pierre, coerced in to helping by the French government and operating as Sergei's dropping point. The story develops around the personal relationship between Sergei and Pierre and also that of their families. Sergei is confident and casual but ultimately a little careless. While Pierre becomes paranoid and with his young family in tow begins to feel the stress.The data turns out to industrial espionage on everything from the Space Shuttle to the US defence strategy and even secret communication codes. When the American are shown the information by the French (in a neat piece of one-upmanship) it is only a matter of time before action has to be taken and lives are in danger.The pace is slow and constant and never flat. Tantalisingly delicate, a very light brush from the director allows the actors to communicate in manner rarely seen in Hollywood films. Similar with the cinematography which is used sparingly and always to accentuate the story. Watch out for the early scene where they first meet which simply says 'spies'. Then the scenes of northern Russia in winter.This is a very smart film with excellent understated performances from all the cast. Watch out for several more famous actors in cameo and small roles. Fred Ward playing Ronald Reagan looks positively weird though they get away with it.If you arrived here before viewing be sure, it is well worth watching. Spy Game plus.

Andres Salama A good if a bit talky spy thriller from France that fictionalizes the real case of Vladimir Vetrov, a high ranking spy from the KGB who in the early 1980s and under the code name Farewell gave to the DST, the French internal security service, a massive dossier of files that showed how the Soviets were stealing massively Western technology. The French decided to pass the files to the United States, a convenient thing to do since the Reagan Administration was very suspicious of president François Mitterrand having several communist ministers in his cabinet (Fred Ward has a funny cameo in the movie as Ronald Reagan; Willem Dafoe appears as the CIA director).In the movie Vetrov is called Grigoriev and is played by the famous Serbian director Emir Kusturica. For dramatic reasons, the importance of these files is exaggerated in the movie; they are said to include all sort of things, even diplomatic codes which they did not and the dossier is somehow connected with the decision to announce the Star Wars weapons program. In the film, and since embassy personnel was under surveillance from the KGB, the DST decides to use as a contact with Grigoriev a French engineer working in Moscow for the Thomson firm (who is played by Guillaume Canet as a nervous Woody Allen type guy; Alexandra Maria Lara plays his wife who is obviously shocked when she learns her nerdy husband moonlights as a spy).Directed by Christian Carion, who made the very good World War I drama Joyeux Noel the film is especially fine in the reconstruction of the early 1980s and especially the Soviet Union at the time (Moscow is shown here as surprisingly sunny; if a movie based on this case have been made during the Cold War, Moscow would have looked surely much more gloomy and sinister). A good effort.

Cambridge Film Festival FAREWELL is an elegant depiction of Cold War espionage based on true events that proved catalytic to the demise of the Soviet Union. Pierre Froment (Guillame Canet), a French businessman who is 'above suspicion' due to his amateur status, is compelled to deliver high level intelligence from reckless, disillusioned KGB veteran Sergei Grigoriev (Emir Kusturica) to Reagan's cabinet via François Mitterrand, thereby crippling Soviet intelligence.Whilst Froment and Grigoriev convincingly resemble weary bureaucrats, scenes in the White House lack credibility - perhaps an attempt at satire by Carion, they are nevertheless rendered redundant by the sombre refinement of the film. Cultural boundaries between East and West deliver brief comic reprieve, and signal the imminent disintegration of an already stagnant regime.Suffused with nostalgia, we observe Brezhnev-era Moscow cast in the lurid yellow light of street-lamps, or bleached white by lens flare, with an effortless attention to detail - Muscovites stand in endless queues on street corners as Soviet vehicles roam empty boulevards flanked by Socialist realist statues. Subterranean scenes add a noir aesthetic, reflecting the shades of deception throughout - in the words of Grigoriev; "I live in lies and solitude".Kusturica gives a shatteringly affecting performance, conveying Grigoriev's wistful patriotism and hope for his son's future with a rare eloquence. Carion creates real suspense and accommodates subtle plot twists, but there are no cheap thrills here- the film defies the brash conventions of its genre. Understated, fluid camera-work and dedicated performances deliver a film of classic style and depth. 5 out of 5Cambridge Film Festival Daily