Caffeinated Clint
By Ashley Hillard
If the Weinsteins manage to get Miramax back from Disney’s tight grip, hopefully their taste in film comes with it. Another disappointing film comes out of the ailing production company with ”The Concert”. If I hadn’t read a synopsis of what the film was about prior to viewing it, I would have felt a little lost.
Andrei Simoniovich Filipov (Aleksei Guskov) was once a renowned conductor of Russia’s prestigious Bolshoi orchestra. When he allowed Jewish musicians to play in the orchestra however (this is barely covered in the film) he is let go and ends up as a janitor in the building he once made music in. Hope seems lost until Filipov comes across an email intended for the Bolshoi to play at The Chatelet Theater in Paris. He decides to rally his former orchestra so that they can play in the place of the Bolshoi.
His band of misfits manages to get to Paris and then everyone wanders off. Like a musical version of ”The Mighty Ducks”, Filipov has to try to rally his team, though it seems like they could give a rat’s ass and just want to make new lives for themselves in France. It’s hard to root for a group that seems so dispassionate about the very reason they came to Paris in the first place. They don’t care and as an audience member, I don’t care either. Director / writer Radu Mihaileanu (”Live and Become”) pulls weak performances from the actors. Though there are numerous writers named on the project, no one seemed to want to write characters that people cared about, with the exception of one. The best performance by far comes from Tarantino’s Shosanna, Melanie Laurent, as violin prodigy Anne-Marie Jacquet. Her scene at the end earns this film an extra 1/2 a star. ”The Concert”, if nothing else, showcases her talent as an actress.
