Blame It on Fidel

Blame It on Fidel
Theatrical release poster
FrenchLa Faute à Fidel
Directed byJulie Gavras
Screenplay byJulie Gavras
Based onTutta colpa di Fidel
by Domitilla Calamai
Produced bySylvie Pialat
Mathieu Bompoint
StarringNina Kervel-Bey
Julie Depardieu
Stefano Accorsi
CinematographyNathalie Durand
Edited byPauline Dairou
Music byArmand Amar
Production
companies
Distributed byGaumont Columbia TriStar Films
Release date
  • 26 November 2006 (2006-11-26)
Running time
98 minutes[1]
CountriesFrance
Italy
LanguageFrench
Box office$1,360,243[2]

Blame It on Fidel (French: La Faute à Fidel) is a 2006 French-Italian drama film directed by Julie Gavras. The screenplay, written by Gavras, is based on Domitilla Calamai's Italian novel of the same name. The film stars Nina Kervel-Bey, Julie Depardieu, and Stefano Accorsi.

The film covers an array of philosophy and ideology - everything from Communism to Catholicism to Greek and Asian mythology - which the protagonist must reconstruct from confusion into her own set of beliefs.

Plot

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Nine-year-old Anna de la Mesa weathers big changes in her household as her parents become radical political activists in 1970-71 Paris. Her Spanish-born lawyer father Fernando is inspired by his sister's opposition to Franco and by Salvador Allende's victory in Chile; he quits his job and becomes a liaison for Chilean activists in France. Her mother, Marie, a Marie Claire journalist-turned-writer documenting the stories of women's abortion ordeals, supports her husband and climbs aboard the ideological bandwagon. As a result, Anna's French bourgeois life is over. She must adjust to refugee nannies, international cuisine, and a cramped apartment full of noisy revolutionaries.

Cast

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Release

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Blame It on Fidel premiered at the Deauville American Film Festival on 10 September 2006 and opened theatrically in France on 29 November that year. It opened in North American release on 3 August 2007.

Box office

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The film earned $9,004 in its opening weekend, ranking number 64 in the domestic box office. It went on to gross $168,065 domestically and $1,192,178 overseas for a worldwide total of $1,360,243.[2]

Critical reception

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The film holds a 93% approval rating on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes based on 45 critics.[3] On Metacritic, the film has a 74/100 rating, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[4]

References

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  1. ^ "BLAME IT ON FIDEL (12A)". British Board of Film Classification. 27 September 2007. Retrieved 7 December 2014.
  2. ^ a b "Blame It on Fidel (2007)". Box Office Mojo. IMDb. 21 December 2007. Retrieved 7 December 2014.
  3. ^ "Blame It on Fidel". Rotten Tomatoes. Flixster. Retrieved 7 December 2014.
  4. ^ "Blame It on Fidel Reviews". Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Retrieved 7 December 2014.
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