FAREWELL/Austin Film Society

Once again this Essential Cinema selection was terrific!  A spy thriller about real events during the cold war. This is a French film extremely well acted by a Serbian filmmaker and the French director of TELL NO ONE (damn these guys can multi-task!)  The depiction of Ronald Regan is a hoot and one of my favorite scenes is a Russian adolescent boy lip-syncing WE WILL WE WILL ROCK YOU in a field of tall grass.  While his Russian Dad is busy spying and divulging secrets that will help to dismantle the KGB and the Soviet bloc he doesn't forget his teenage son's desire for a SONY walkman and QUEEN CDs and so arranges for his French co-conspirator to bring them back from France.  This is a beautiful film about courage, ethics, and imperfect men taking enormous personal risk to do the right thing.  An important story.