Back in the USSR’s bad old Brezhnev days, a Jewish violinist (played by Mélanie Laurent) was exiled to Siberia while her conductor (played by Aleksei Guskov) was demoted to janitor. Years later he reassembles his orchestra for a final fling in Paris.
Le Concert’s comic plot builds to a glorious fantasia about the redemptive power of art–Mahler & Tchaikovsky counterpointed by cellphones bursting forth at random with The Internationale.
Laurent, best-known as the vengeful “Shoshanna” in Inglorious Basterds is absolutely luminous, & I was thoroughly enchanted by this new film from Romanian director Radu Mihaileanu. (FYI, Mihaileanu’s last film–made in Ethiopia & Israel–was the emotional To Live & Become).
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Photo courtesy of The Weinstein Company. All Rights Reserved.
