Le Concert (2009)
Directed by Radu Mihaileanu

Film Review

In this, his fourth feature, director Radu Mihaileanu treads a fine line between the grotesque and the glorious, and visibly struggles to make comfortable bedfellows of its two main ingredients, boisterous farce and sentimental melodrama.   The sombre references to the old Soviet purges sit ill alongside the kind of gags you'd expect to find in an episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus.  Le Concert is an unwieldy mishmash that somehow manages to redeem itself in its last twenty minutes or so, although a certain Pyotr Tchaikovsky should take the lion's share of the credit for this.

Those who are familiar with Mihaileanu's work will notice some plot similarities with his previous films, Train de vie (1998) and Va, vis et deviens (2005).  In each of these three films, the protagonists resort to impersonation as a means of salvation.   Train de vie involves a party of Jews who try to escape the Nazis by faking their own deportation.  In Va, vis et deviens, an Ethiopian mother passes her son off as a Jew so that he can be airlifted to safety during an evacuation.  In Le Concert, a group of blacklisted Russian musicians pretend to be the Bolshoi Orchestra.  When this recurring theme was pointed out to Mihaileanu, he revealed that his father had had to assume a false identity during the war to evade capture by the Nazis.   A Romanian who has lived in France for the past thirty years, Mihaileanu admitted that he also felt that he has acquired a dual identity.

Mihaileanu's penchant for heavily ladled sentimentality can be noticed in his earlier films, but in Le Concert the emotional heart-tugging is carried to almost operatic proportions.  The director gets away with this by counterpointing the treacly sentimentality with some wacky humour, this sweet-and-sour combination somehow managing to work genuine feeling into the film.   The concert hall finale is particularly effective and is so overpowering that it risks drowning the spectator in a tsunami of raw emotion.

The film is not without charm and grandeur but it also has some inescapable flaws.  For one thing it is overlong and is handicapped with a needlessly muddled middle section which could easily have been excised since it adds nothing whatever to the substance of the film.  The characters are generally well-played, even if a few veer too closely to caricature.  Aleksei Guskov's one-note portrayal of the leading protagonist is made bearable only by the livelier contributions from his co-stars, notably Mélanie Laurent, who really does look as though she might be a world-class violinst.

Le Concert may not be what we might have expected from a director of Radu Mihaileanu's ability but it has an indefinable appeal and is, overall, an enjoyable romp.  If only Mihaileanu had been able to sustain the lyracism and emotional intensity that are felt in the film's final movement throughout the entire two hour runtime, then it might very well have been a masterpiece.  As its is, Le Concert is an uncomfortably disjointed film which is only partially satisfying.  To its credit though, it is a superb promotion piece for classical music, and that can surely be no bad thing.

Film Synopsis

Way back in the 1970s, Andrei Filipov was one of the most famous conductors in the Soviet Union.  He worked with the world-renowned Bolshoi Orchestra and led a privileged and comfortable life.  But then it was all taken away from him - his job, his status, his income - when he refused to part company with his Jewish musicians, who included a close friend, Sacha.  Three decades later, he still works for the same orchestra, but in the menial capacity of a cleaner.  Andrei still reflects on the old days but doubts whether he will ever be able to conduct an orchestra again.

Then, one day, Andrei gets his chance to make his dream come true.  He is working late one evening, assiduously cleaning his boss's office, when he comes across a fax inviting the Bolshoi Orchestra to give a concert at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris.  Immediately a fantastic idea pops into Andrei's head.  He will look up his old friends and see whether they would be willing to come together and pass themselves off as the famous orchestra.  After thirty years, it looks as if Andrei will finally be able to get his revenge...