The Stranger

Insulated from the cultural tumult of the late 1960s by her family's wealth, Anna (Nina Kervel) is an impeccably behaved French child with the instincts of a tiny dictator (at a party, she attempts to teach the other kids how to remove perfect hemispheres of peel from an orange with a knife). She loves divinity class at her Catholic school; she adores her grandparents’ estate in the Bordeaux. And she does not appreciate it when her lawyer father, belatedly stricken by conscience and loyalty to his imprisoned brother, rushes off to Spain to fight Franco and foment revolution. Bewildered by her parents’ ideological about-face, Anna digs her heels in, asserting her will as children will: by refusing new foods and reading “fascist” Mickey Mouse comics. Director Julie Gavras tells the story strictly from Anna’s point of view, so when the girl discovers she’s consented to formerly tantrum-inducing changes, we’re just as surprised as she is--but maybe more delighted. Blame It on Fidel! is in part a simple dismantling of simple politics (how, Anna asks, is solidarity different from the behavior of sheep?), but the human story, about children struggling to understand adult ideas, is beautifully nuanced. By Annie Wagner