Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		4.0

Farewell Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Svet Atanasov September 2, 2011

Screened at the Toronto International Film Festival, French director Christian Carion's "L'affaire Farewell" a.k.a "Farewell" (2009) arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Universal Studios-UK. Unfortunately, there are no supplemental features on this Blu-ray disc. In French, Russian, and English, with optional English subtitles for the main feature. Region-B "locked".

Listening...

One of the most important espionage cases of the 20th Century. – Ronald Reagan.

Christian Carion’s Farewell is an old-fashioned spy thriller set in Moscow during the early 1980s and is about two men leading double lives. One is Russian, the other French.

Sergei Gregoriev (Emir Kusturica, Underground, The Widow of Saint-Pierre) is a high-ranking apparatchik with access to top secret information, who has started working for DGSE (Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure). Once a passionate communist, Sergei has realized that the Party and its leaders have betrayed the Russian people.

The second man is Pierre Froment (Guillaume Canet, Ne le dis à personne, Les petits mouchoirs), a French engineer working on a big government project, who lives in Russia with his German wife (Alexandra Maria Lara, Control, The Baader Meinhof Complex). Pierre often travels to Paris, which is why he is approached by Sergei after an accident compromises his contact.

Sergei gives Pierre a stack of documents that quickly reach the desk of French president Francois Mitterrand (Philippe Magnan, Une affaire d'état, La Princesse de Montpensier). The documents are so important that a few days later the head of DGSE (Niels Arestrup, A Prophet) meets President Ronald Reagan (Fred Ward, The Player) and CIA chief Feeney (Willem Dafoe, Antichrist) in the Oval Office. Not long after that, SDI, better known as "Star Wars", is announced.

Back in Moscow Sergei, who is given the code name "Farewell", contacts Pierre again and informs him that very soon he would have the X-list, which has the names of every single secret agent the U.S.S.R. has in the West. With the X-list in the hands of DGSE, the U.S.S.R. would literally cease to exist.

Based on the book by Vladimir Vetrov, an ex-KGB spy who in the early 1980s did indeed hand DGSE a file with the names of hundreds of agents living and working in the West who were passing industrial secrets to the U.S.S.R., Farewell is a film that reminds about Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s The Lives of Others. It builds slowly, it is devoid of glamour, and it effectively recreates the maddening uncertainty that was an inseparable part of life behind the Iron Curtain.

It is a popular belief in the West that President Reagan ended the Cold War after the U.S.S.R. could not keep up with his ambitious "Star Wars". In other words, the U.S. bankrupted the U.S.S.R., which is why and how perestroika was initiated. After it, it was only a matter of time before the entire Eastern Bloc would start falling apart.

This film tells a very different story, one that again has the U.S. playing a key role in the process, but with very different ambitions in mind, none of which apparently had anything to do with bringing democracy to Eastern Europe and the now defunct U.S.S.R.

Note: In 2009, Farewell was screened at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Farewell Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1, encoded with MPEG-4 AVC and granted a 1080p transfer, Christian Carion's Farewell arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Universal Studios-UK.

It appears that this high-definition transfer, like the one NeoClassics Films Ltd. used in the United States, was sourced from the same French master which Pathe first used for their local Blu-ray release of Farewell. Naturally, all three Blu-ray releases look practically identical.

The image is consistently crisp and sharp, with many of the daylight scenes conveying tremendous depth and fluidity. The close-ups - and there are plenty throughout the entire film - are also incredibly detailed. Color reproduction is also very convincing, especially during the outdoor scenes (right before Pierre and Jessica cross the Finnish border, there are some spectacular panoramic shots). As it was the case with the U.S. Blu-ray release, edge-enhancement, halo effects, and ringing patterns do not plague the high-definition transfer. I did not see any serious compression artifacts to report in this review either. All in all, this is a solid, very convincing presentation that does the film justice. (Notice: This is a Region-B "locked" Blu-ray disc. Therefore, you must have a native Region-B or Region-Free PS3 or SA in order to access its content).

Farewell Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

There is only one audio track on this Blu-ray disc: French DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (with portions of English and Russian). For the record, Universal Studios-UK have provided optional English subtitles for the main feature (but they could be turned off only when English isn't spoken).

The French DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track has a wide range of nuanced dynamics that serve Clint Mansell's moody soundtrack very well. I particularly liked the final third of the film where the main protagonists realize that their lives have been irreversibly changed - the music here is excellent, reminding about Stéphane Moucha and Gabriel Yared's soundtrack from The Lives of Others. The dialog is crisp, clean, stable, and very easy to follow. The English translation is excellent.

Farewell Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Unfortunately, there are no supplemental features on this Blu-ray disc.

Farewell Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Christian Carion's Farewell is one of the best spy films I have seen in years. It is intelligent, thought-provoking, and exceptionally well acted. This year, it is one of my favorite films. The Blu-ray disc herein reviewed, courtesy of Universal Studios-UK, looks and sounds terrific. I am slightly disappointed, however, that there are no supplemental features on it. Regardless, do not miss Farewell. VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.