a SIFF 2010 review
Melodious Concert Worthy of a Standing Ovation
At fifty years of age Andreï Filipov (Aleksei Guskov) is not where he expected to be. Well, that’s not entirely true. He’s working at the Bolshoi Orchestra, working damned hard, actually. But he’s working as maintenance man, fixing toilets and scrubbing floors, doing the sort of grunt work others nowhere near as skilled as he should be doing in order to make a living.
Mélanie Laurent in The Concert © The Weinstein Company
How skilled? Once upon a time he was actually the famed young up and coming conductor of the Bolshoi and everyone believed he was destined for stardom. But even though he was at the height of his fame the fact he refused to shed his Jewish members enraged the ruling communist party, the powers that be firing him and disbanding the entire orchestra making Andreï a national laughingstock.
Now opportunity presents itself. Cleaning the director’s office he inadvertently intercepts a fax from the Pleyel in Paris asking if the Bolshoi can appear in two weeks time to take the place of the canceling Los Angeles Philharmonic. Andreï is struck with inspiration. He will reassemble his old orchestra, many of whom haven’t played for decades, and impersonate the Bolshoi, proving once and for all he really is one of the greatest conductors Russia – maybe even the world – has ever had the privilege to produce.
For such a gentile premise, there is a heck of a lot going on in writer and director Radu Milhaileanu’s The Concert. While the setup is pure old school overachieving underdog cliché, how it all ultimately comes together is anything but. There is political intrigue, buried childhood secrets, unknown parental revelations and arrogant regret all bubbling beneath the surface fighting for control. There are also tales of brotherly friendship and eternal matrimonial love, all of it coming together in a symphony of comedy, heartache, tears and euphoria that had me consistently engaged.
Does it all work? No, not really. Some of the comedy is so broad it almost seems more suited for a French farce than it does a warmhearted tale of musical redemption. Some of Milhaileanu’s mosaic is almost cartoonish in its delivery, a pair of wisecracking wannabe cell phone merchants (who just so happen to be an important part of Andreï’s brass section) particularly silly.
But the emotions running through the core of the film are strong, and the central relationships between Andreï, his wife Irina (Anna Kamenkova Pavlova) and his best friend Sacha Grossman (Dmitri Nazarov) ring true. Even better is a subplot concerning French violist Anne-Marie Jacquet (Mélanie Laurent), trusted assistant Guylène de La Rivière (Miou Miou) knowing far more about this fake Bolshoi and why their conductor so desperately wants the young lady to play with them then she’s willing to let on.
Milhaileanu handles this great mystery with expert precision, juggling all of the elements with dexterous skill. He held me right in the palm of his hand, and like a master conductor himself the director builds things so beautifully I almost worried the coming revelations would somehow spoil the intense joy I felt during this luxuriously exhilarating two act prologue.
I shouldn’t have worried. The film’s symphonic finale is fueled by both Tchaikovsky and bravado. As the crescendos built and the answers to all the simmering questions were finally revealed the emotions welling up inside of me started to spill over into just deserved tears. This was a movie that made me feel sheer delight, and when it was all over all I wanted to do was sit back, relax and marinate in the uplifting joy I was currently reveling in.
Laurent is every bit as good here as she was in Inglourious Basterds, and while the two characters couldn’t be anymore dissimilar the connective tissue running between the performances is the actress who brought each of them to life. But the great Miou Miou also stands out, her fearless, multifaceted portrait of a woman haunted by past choices yet driven to make sure the sacrifices of her dearest friends were not in vain one of the finest supporting performances I’ve seen this year.
But it is Guskov who ultimately holds things together. He has a vice-like grip on the picture, moving it along with galvanizing, single-minded panache. He reminded me in a way of a figure out of The Red Shoes, and like a Russian combination of Julian Craster and Boris Lermontov his pursuit of putting on the perfectionist show of a lifetime is awe inspiring while also hinting at unmitigated tragic disaster.
As I’ve already called the picture uplifting I’ll let you decipher for yourself if the last part of that previous statement comes to pass or not. Nonetheless, no matter if it does or it does not The Concert is the type of underdog fairy tale I could watch virtually every day of the week. Milhaileanu’s aria is a musical parade of emotional jubilation, the final product a crowd-pleasing concerto deserving of rousing applause.
Film Rating: êêê (out of 4)
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