'Farewell': The Cold War casts a pall over a family

Christian Carion's Cold War thriller "Farewell," last seen at Seattle International Film Festival, whisks us around the world with breathless haste as its story unfolds: It's 1981, and a KGB spy (Emir Kusturica) is passing crucial documents to a French engineer (Guillaume Canet) working in Moscow, who will then pass them to French intelligence. We zoom to Washington D.C., to Glasgow, to Munich, back to Moscow, with tense scenes throughout: furtive meetings in cars; a Judas kiss from a chilly blonde; a family waiting nervously at an international border, wondering if they will be allowed to pass into safety.

The film, based on a true story, is an uneasy mix of generic spy thriller and tensions-at-home family drama, but it's definitely entertaining, particularly Fred Ward's turn as Ronald Reagan (he gets the trademark breathy chuckle just right). And Carion lets us see the damage that this kind of work can bring to a family, whose other members simply want to live a normal life. We see a ransacked apartment hauntingly presided over by portraits of those who lived there, smiling yesterday's smiles.

Moira Macdonald: mmacdonald@seattletimes.com