A precocious conduit for big ideas

Anyone who’s ever spent any time with kids knows that by nature they’re conservative, bordering on reactionary. So it’s not surprising that when 9-year-old Anna de la Mesa (Nina Kervel) finds herself caught up in the maelstrom of her parents’ sudden conversion from well-groomed Parisian bourgeoisie to hairy left-wing activists, she freaks out and entrenches.

Directed by Julie Gavras, who as the daughter of famously engaged lefty director Costa-Gavras no doubt knows whereof she speaks, “Blame It on Fidel” is the thoroughly engaging, clear-eyed and charming story of a little girl grappling with the domestic fallout of tumultuous political times.

It’s 1970 and Anna lives in a large, pretty house in Paris with her mother, Marie (Julie Depardieu); her father, Fernando (Stefano Acorsi); her little brother, François (Benjamin Feuillet); and her beloved Cuban nanny, Filomena (Marie-Noëlle Bordeaux). Fierce and serious, Anna attends a private girls school, at which her favorite class is catechism, and is a stickler for the proper way to cut fruit.

When her father’s sister, Marga (Mar Sodupe), and niece, Pilar (Raphaelle Molinier), arrive at their house as refugees from Franquist Spain, things start to change. Marga’s husband has been killed, and Fernando is consumed with guilt at not having risked anything to fight fascism in Spain, as his sister has.

Fernando and Marie give up their respective jobs as lawyer and writer for Marie Claire magazine and become intimately involved with Salvador Allende’s election in Chile. Soon, they have fired Filomena, who hates Castro and all the “rojos barbudos” (bearded reds) responsible for taking her land back home and forcing her into exile, and they’ve withdrawn Anna from her religion class. As their apartment becomes increasingly invaded by activists who refer to her as their “pequeña momia,” Spanish for “little mummy,” which was what Chilean left-wingers called right-wingers at the time, Anna takes refuge in her bourgeois grandparents, who tell her it’s one thing to be polite to the poor and another to let them take one’s property.

The slippery and elusive nature of ideology is brought to light in the way that Anna tries to make sense of the changes and conflicts around her. She and François are sitting in the car while their father runs into the office, and a parking cop approaches. Convinced they are about to be napalmed, the kids hide in the back seat and proceed to have the most hilarious, absurd and yet logical political argument ever, which ends in a brief discussion of whether it’s the communists who are “rojos barbudos” or whether that’s Santa Claus.

When Anna, finally ready to concede to her parents, misinterprets their belief in group solidarity and answers a question incorrectly in class because everyone else answered incorrectly, her parents are stumped. What’s the difference between group solidarity and behaving like sheep?

A remarkably assured and elegant debut, “Blame It on Fidel” is the kind of smart, sophisticated and fiercely humanistic film that all movies should aspire to be, but seldom do. It has big ideas about big ideas, and the tiny force of nature that is the unnervingly intense and powerful Kervel is just the little kid to filter them.

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carina.chocano@latimes.com

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“Blame It on Fidel.” No MPAA rating. Running time: 1 hour, 39 minutes. In French and Spanish with English subtitles. Playing at Laemmle’s Royal, 11523 Santa Monica Blvd., West L.A., (310) 477-5581, and Regency South Coast Village, 1561 W. Sunflower Ave., Santa Ana, (714) 557-5701. In French and Spanish with English subtitles.