FILM

It retells the story of a high-level KGB defector and has been favourably compared with ‘The Lives of Others’. Robin Askew goes undercover to meet the director of Cold War flick ‘Farewell’.

When you set out to make a film based on a true story of Cold War espionage, many of whose participants are still alive, strange things can happen. French director Christian Carion spent 18 months working on his script about the Farewell affair. One evening, his ex-directory phone rang. "This voice said, 'It's a very interesting story. But I know two or three things that maybe you should know. Would you like to have a coffee with me?' And of course I did. His first question was, 'So Farewell is dead?' I said, 'Yes'. 'Did you see the body?' 'Of course not. Nobody saw it.' He said, 'If the KGB told you he's dead, he must be dead.' So I said, 'OK, let's talk clearly. You're telling me he's living in Italy and making pizzas for a living? Anything is possible.' And he said, 'Yes, that's the point. With a secret service story, anything is possible.' And because of that night, I started to doubt everything. It's a big world of manipulation, you know. And they know how to do it very well. Trust me."

Described by Ronald Reagan himself as "one of the most important espionage cases of the 20th century", the extraordinary but comparatively little-known Farewell Affair was one of the key elements in bringing down the Soviet regime. Back in 1981, Colonel Grigoriev of the KGB, whose real name was Vladimir Vetrov, had become disillusioned with communism under Brezhnev. So he decided to leak secrets to the West. Not just the occasional titbit, but reams and reams of information revealing the full extent of the Soviet spy network. As something of a Francophile, he chose as his intermediary a low-ranking French engineer working in Moscow. The French gave Vetrov the codename 'Farewell' and his papers were vetted by President Mitterand, who was viewed with suspicion by Washington because of the communist ministers in his government. But when Mitterand passed the secrets to Reagan at the G7 summit in Canada, the Americans were astonished at what had fallen into their hands.

At a stroke, the KGB was effectively decapitated in the West, paving the way for the Gorbachev era.

The project came to Carion after an abortive attempt to make the film in the US with Jean Reno and Ben Kingsley in the lead roles. He decided to rework the existing screenplay, referring to two books on the subject: Jacques Attali's 'Verbatim' and Serguei Kostine's 'Bonjour Farewell', which provided a Russian perspective. Once it became known that the film was finally going to be made, shadowy figures such as his late-night caller came forward to offer more information on the promise of anonymity. But while the director had scrupulously sought out the facts for his previous film, 'Merry Christmas', which recounted the story of the WWI Christmas Day truce on the Western Front, he found that the 'truth' was rather more slippery in the Farewell Affair. "It was a big challenge," he laughs. "Everything around the two presidents we know exactly what happened, because there are a lot of witnesses. About Farewell himself, we have some information from the French and the Russians which is the same, so we can say, 'Yes, it was like this.' But where we don't know, I tried to imagine how it was. This movie is not a documentary."

The other major obstacle he faced was the Russians doing everything they could to make his life difficult. Farewell is played, excellently, by Serbian actor/director Emir Kusturica. But rumour has it Carion's original intention was to cast a Russian actor. "Yes, Emir was not my first choice," he confirms. "It's because of the Russian ambassador in Paris. Every Russian actor was afraid to play Farewell. So it's because of him that Emir got the role. I want to thank this guy, who's now the Russian Minister of Culture. What we discovered is that the Farewell Affair, even 25 years later, is not dead. You have to remember that all the people in government in Russia now came from the KGB."

He was also forbidden to film in Moscow, making creative use of Ukraine instead. But that didn't stop him sneaking in to snatch some shots of the Kremlin just for the hell of it. "I was so depressed not to be able to shoot in Moscow, but we decided to steal four shots. We went to Moscow with the name of another production, officially to prepare a commercial for Coca-Cola. We were working with a Russian producer who had this marvellous idea to rent a cop – but under the table, of course. The job of the guy was just to come with us and to be in uniform – that was very important. He was very tall, so very easy to see. And he was standing very close to the camera on the sidewalk. When you have a policeman in uniform close to the camera, it means everything is official. So we shot the Kremlin, some bridges, some statues and so on."

A confirmed Anglophile, Carion also relished the rare opportunity to take the British biopic approach and depict Mitterand on screen. “You know, I love one of your movies named 'The Queen'," he enthuses. "It's one of my favourite movies. I was fascinated by the way the queen and your prime minister were played. I really believed in everything. We in France are not able to do this. Nobody tries to make a movie about our president or prime minister. Because it's too much ancien regime. We are too respectful."

Feedback from those who played a part in the Farewell Affair has been necessarily limited. Carion held a special screening for the French secret service. "At the end, I went to talk to them and said, 'So, what do you think of my movie.' The engineer who's played by Guillaume Canet in the film said: 'The guy who is on the screen is the guy I met. But that's all I can tell you.'"

Any chance of 'Farewell' being screened in Russia in the foreseeable future, then? "Ha ha ha. There is no Russian release possible right now. We tried. There is a very important festival in Moscow, so we proposed the movie. We had an answer from the guy who organises the festival. He told me the Minister of Culture said: ‘I alive, never!’ That's a very clear answer."

It's certainly a thrilling and involving film that has earned comparison with another brilliant recent Cold War flick, 'The Lives of Others'. "Oh my god, I was so impressed by 'The Lives of Others' that I don't make any comparison," says Canet, sounding genuinely embarrassed. "It's impossible for me, you know? It's another movie. It's another story. When I saw the movie, I was writing 'Farewell'. It was very difficult for me because it was such a great movie. I said, 'Wow, how can I continue now?' But we did it…"

'FAREWELL' OPENED ON FRI 29 APR.

Copyright Robin Askew 2011