Film Reviews

The Concert

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• Details: France/Russia/Italy/Romania/Belgium / 119mins (TBC).

They say that the difference between comedy and tragedy is minute, but the tone of the comedy and tragedy in Radu Milhaileanu's The Concert are worlds apart and the director fails to make the two gel. However, when he's concentrating solely on the drama, The Concert shines.
Thirty years ago Andrei Filipov (Guskov) was a renowned conductor of the Bolshoi orchestra, but when he was publicly denounced as an enemy of the people for hiring Jewish musicians he took it hard, turning into a pathetic alcoholic and reduced to being a caretaker in the same building he once wowed his audiences. However, when a chance to come good again crops up Andrei seizes it: intercepting a fax from the Chatelet Theatre in Paris, Andrei poses as the current Bolshoi conductor and accepts the invitation. Now all he has to do is round up his rusty old orchestra, rehearse Tchaikovsky's complicated Violin Concerto, employ the man who denounced him as manager (Barinov), wangle some passports, make his way to France, and keep the Bolshoi in the dark about his plans. If that isn't hard enough, his insistence on acquiring acclaimed French violinist (Laurent, Inglorious Basterds) for the solo could be for personal rather than ambitious reasons...
The Concert is a mixture of the absurd and the touching, as Milhaileanu attempts to keep the film light and breezy despite addressing anti-Semitism, oppression, freedom, redemption and broken dreams. Even though some of the performances confuse energetic with noisy, they are frisky, bouncing along in tandem to the busy proceedings. Laurent's turn contrasts wildly with her co-stars - she's the quiet centre of the film, the real heart, and Milhaileanu uses her sparingly so when she does appear the film takes on a more melancholic and serious tone. When Milhaileanu is wacky for wacky sake, The Concert fails to work: one scene sees a shootout at wedding that is lobbed in for no other reason than the film had gone a little quiet for a moment, and that, in this film, seems to be a cardinal sin. The scene is jarring, ridiculous and isn't as funny as the director thinks it is.
A rousing finale, however, encourages the audience to forget/forgive the film's previous foibles and a searing rendition of Tchaikovsky's piece, as all the plot strands are gathered together, makes that as easy as possible.

Review by Gavin Burke