Thursday, July 15, 2010

Notable New Film: The Concert

A new movie opens July 30 starring Melanie Laurent and Alexei Guskov and it sounds like a fun summer diversion for Russophiles. We're waiting for our review copy to deliver a judgement, but here is a synopsis from the production company's website, with an embed of the trailer below:

Andrei Filipov was a prodigy - the celebrated conductor of the Bolshoi Orchestra, the greatest orchestra in Russia. Today, aged 50, he still works at the Bolshoi, but as a cleaner.

During the communist era, he was fired at the height of his fame for refusing to get rid of all his Jewish players "Zionists and enemies of the People" including his best friend Sacha Grossman. Andrei sank into booze and depression.

The Director of the Bolshoi, an old apparatchik, has been promising forever to return Andrei's orchestra to him "soon", but he's mocking him, humiliating him sadistically. For him, Andrei's a has-been, and he's doing him a big favor by keeping him on as a cleaner.

Then Andrei finds a fax inviting the orchestra to play at Pleyel, in Paris, in two weeks' time, as a last minute replacement for the indisposed Los Angeles Philharmonic. Andrei conceives of a crazy notion: he'll round up his old musician buddies, a motley bunch now scraping a living in Moscow as cab drivers, removal men, flea market traders, suppliers of porno film sound effects.

They'll go to Paris as the Bolshoi. They'll defy destiny and take their revenge! Will they make it?