2009 | France | NR | 113 min.
This cold-war thriller feels timelier with every passing day. “Farewell” is the true story of a tired, disillusioned Soviet colonel who leaked KGB secrets to the west in early 1980s Moscow. He believed that his funneled secrets could start a new revolution, and based on Ronald Reagan’s description of the events as “one of the most important espionage cases of the 20th century,” he might have had due cause for that belief. Director Christian Carion grounds the story in the real world rather than indulging in breakneck Jason Bourne type escape. The colonel is annoyed when the French send an amateur engineer (Guillaume Canet, “Rock’n Roll,” also playing at this year’s festival) as his handler. Everyone is sullied, and ideals are compromised. As the task of betraying his country for the sake of the greater good begins to take its toll, this satisfyingly sober thriller becomes as morally complex as a John Le Carré novel.
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