Farewell

Hopscotch Films

R4 DVD

French, Russian with English subtitles

The story is based on Colonel Grigoriev, an Intelligence officer in a KBG group during the Cold War. His job was to receive incoming intelligence and integrate it with other sources. The final information would then be passed on to the relevant Departments. It was a powerful and responsible position with just about every piece of intelligence received passing through his hands. Grigoriev was disillusioned with Brezhnev’s Politburo and where they were leading Russia, so he decided to start passing intelligence to NATO in the hope he could change the direction of his country.

He was assigned a code name by the French, Farewell. He was also given a contact, a French engineer temporarily working in Moscow. The engineer, Pierre Froment, was not a spy – he was just a convenient contact point for Grigoriev. The two men gradually developed a friendship. Froment’s wife was however suspicious of her husband’s new secrecy. When she found out about his espionage duties she urged him to stop as the lives of their two children and herself would now be under threat. Grigoriev’s family was also becoming estranged from him and he started an affair with a secretary at work.

French President Mitterand showed the information on America to Ronald Reagan. Reagan’s staff was astounded at the level and detail and realised that they had a serious internal espionage problem. Grigoriev then gave them a list of agents working for the Russians against the Americans. With the assassination or arrest of the agents the KGB knew they also had an agent in their midst and Grigoriev was soon picked up and interrogated. Froment made a desperate dash for the border with his family.

The film is slow on action but strong on motivation and sheer acting skill. Emir Kusturica is brilliant as Grigoriev, depicting him as a strongly patriotic man but rather lonely because of his work. Guillaume Canet as Froment is just as good. His slightly frightened depiction of Froment and his unfamiliarity with the world of espionage are played well, and it is easy to see how a friendship would develop between the two men.

Grigoriev’s hope for a new world order partly came true. Reagan committed to the Star Wars project, something that Russian technology could not match. It would have made the Russian missile-based technology obsolete and they had no choice but to withdraw and concentrate on their internal problems rather than on the ideal of Communist world domination. Grigoriev asked nothing for his work except a Queen tape for his son and some good wine for himself.

The steady build-up of tension is magnificent. The near-misses with Security, the need for secrecy, and the problems of cheating on their families all serve to build up the tension and the friendship between the men. The subtitles are not a problem and the genuine language on the soundtrack only adds to the realism of the film. It is not a spy film in the James Bond sense but has a deep underlying sense of grim reality only softened slightly by the wild winter scenery and the comfortable family scenes. The French production values seem to have brought something special to a film about two very brave men.

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