Excellent, Without a doubt!!

As Good As It Gets

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Who needs Hollywood? No political correctness, no censoring, just a portrait of a young family living in the 70'ties France in the aftermath of the '68 revolution. Feeling an obligation to follow up and contribute in the overturn of the dictatorships in Spain and Chile. Gives me personally a perspective on a time, where I, myself being 10-12 years old like Anna, the main character, only sensed the 'strange' music and colorful clothing. So captivating, that I forgot to randomly check my smart phone during the entire movie. As a story told from a child's perspective in a certain period of time, 'Fidel' falls in the same category as El Espiritu de La Colmena (1973) and El Laberinto Del Fauno (2006)

This movie is subtle, well made and undoubtedly good for your soul, like broccoli. However, like broccoli, it can be a bit too bland and boring. You get to watch a child's life through the child's eyes. Her trials are not major and she handles them without major drama. The lead is a child actress Nina Kervel-Bey. Her part is quite unusual. She is not adorable or endearing. She is not a brat. She is not a ninny. She is not a waif. She is intelligent, but not freakily precocious. She is admirably stubborn and independent. Just as in real life, the adults don't notice how aware she is of all that is going on and talk down to her. She listens in all the time on adult conversations. I recall as a preschooler sitting on the floor while adults had conversations that I was sure they did not want me to hear. As long as I did not move, it seemed for them I did not exist or that they presumed I was incapable of understanding what they were saying. Films and books nearly always underestimate children. It is as if the authors can't remember what it was like, and go for a Disneyfied haze over the lens making children into happy idiots. This movie does not make that error. Steffano Accorsi plays the father. He was also in one of my favourite movies of all time My Secret Life/Ignorant Fairies where he plays a similar warm gentle character.

If you remember being a child confused about the 'grown ups' around you, then this film is worth watching. I thought it was going to be a heavy dark film - and it might be on one level - but it's not at all on the other, mainly because it is about seeing the ('grown up') world from a child's point of view. It reminded me a bit of Pan's Labyrinth in that way, i.e. the way there is an 'adults world' and a 'child's world', although Pan's Labyrinth focuses more on childhood escapism, but 'Blame in Fidel' is more about childhood realism. That is to say this film focuses, in a really lovely accurate way, on a child struggling to understand the real world around them, especially when the adults around her don't tell her the full story. There is no fantasy here. It's all very real. Anna clearly wants to understand what's going on. She hears snippets of conversations and tries to put it all together, sometimes correctly, sometimes incorrectly. Definitely worth a watch!

Wonderful movie that clears out your mind and leaves you purified when feeling so dirty. Wonderful little girl! Wonderful little boy! So amazed by how they are that I don't feel like saying more on the movie in general. Anna de la Mesa is so real. All that phases she goes through and all the complication of her mind are beautifully harmonized with the politics. It's not a story of a changing family (life); it's rather the display of a huge load on the shoulders of a little girl. It's worth it; watch it.(By the way just because I watched the two in a row; I must say that "La Faute à Fidel" is much more effective than "Persepolis" in order of viewing the world from a growing child's point-of-view. Good directing there by Julie Gavras.)