 Farewell
(France) 109 mins. Rated M
Wednesday 8th September
2.30, 5.00 & 7.15pm
Planning to end the corrupt Brezhnev regime in 1981, Sergei, a KGB officer whose code name is Farewell, requires a go-between to leak documents to the West. He chooses an unlikely French engineer, Pierre, who lives in the French Embassy with his wife and children. Reluctantly, Pierre passes the information onto the French Government which hands them directly to the United States.
From this little known true story, the leaks are said to have paved the way to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Director Christian Carion, (Joyeux Noel), has interestingly cast two fellow directors, Emir Kusturica as Sergei and Guillaume Canet as Pierre in the lead roles. There are also cameo parts by Fred Ward as Ronald Reagan with William Dafoe as his top aide and Philippe Magnan as Francois Mitterand.
Director:
Christian Carion
Writers:
Christian Carion (writer)
Serguei Kostine (book)
Eric Raynaud (written by)
Cast
Emir Kusturica ... Sergei Gregoriev
Guillaume Canet ... Pierre Froment
Alexandra Maria Lara ... Jessica Froment
Ingeborga Dapkunaite ... Natasha
Aleksey Gorbunov ... Choukhov (as Oleksii Gorbunov)
Dina Korzun ... Alina
Philippe Magnan ... François Mitterrand
Niels Arestrup ... Vallier
Fred Ward ... Ronald Reagan
 David Soul ... Hutton
Willem Dafoe ... Feeney
Evgeniy Kharlanov ... Igor (as Evgenie Kharlanov)
Valentin Varetskiy ... Anatoly (as Valentin Varetsky)
Diane Kruger ... Femme jogging
 Despite the majority of the 113-minute running time consisting of dialogue-heavy talks between Grigoriev and Froment, the movie holds a fascination for the audience because it squarely puts the focus on the...
Keith Cohen
Entertainment Spectrum
In the high-noon finale, the personal and the political have an effectively tense showdown, with the double-crosses and getaways we expect from a good espionage flick.
Joe Williams
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
 The stakes seem credible because French director Christian Carion ('Joyeux Noël' ) is working from a fascinating chapter of history that's only come to light recently.
Dan Lybarger
MovieMaker Magazine
Cold War espionage as a winning character study
Jeff Meyers
Metro Times (Detroit, MI)
A realistic and grounded spy thriller that sheds the Hollywood and drills down to the real people and events of the most famous spy story in history.
Ron Wilkinson
Monsters and Critics
If taken merely as a vaguely historical spy thriller, Farewell is a dandy tale.
Marjorie Baumgarten
Austin Chronicle
 A smart and suspenseful thriller, but one that's grounded in the reality of the world we all live in -- whether we're spies or engineers.
Steven Rea
Philadelphia Inquirer
There is much that is wonderful about this riveting political thriller set at the end of the Cold War, so it is worth overlooking some of the confusing storytelling.
Louise Keller
Urban Cinefile
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