Movie: Farewell

Okay, yes it is a foreign film meaning you would have to - short of learning French - do a lot of reading, and it was probably difficult to pick up the plot from the trailer, but trust me: this is a good one.

It's a Cold War film and based on actual events. So, while dramatized, the film offers the closest moviemakers can provide to showing the actual nitty-gritty of espionage short of a documentary, which would kind of defeat the whole espionage having the spies followed by camera crews.

What is also really interesting about this movie are the two leading. Emir Kusturica, here playing a troubled KGB officer who begins feeding information to the West, and Guillaume Canet, playing a French engineer stationed in Moscow to whom the KGB officer randomly selects to unload his secret knowledge upon, are both major European directors. The drama of that clashing of powerful personalities is all captured upon the screen.

Kusturica, the big, wild haired one, has a compelling brute charisma to him. Juxtapose this with Canet, the mustached fellow, playing his character with a severe professorish quality. An excellent pair up.