This movie is subtle, well made and undoubtedly good for your soul, like broccoli. However, like broccoli, it can be a bit too bland and boring. You get to watch a child's life through the child's eyes. Her trials are not major and she handles them without major drama. The lead is a child actress Nina Kervel-Bey. Her part is quite unusual. She is not adorable or endearing. She is not a brat. She is not a ninny. She is not a waif. She is intelligent, but not freakily precocious. She is admirably stubborn and independent. Just as in real life, the adults don't notice how aware she is of all that is going on and talk down to her. She listens in all the time on adult conversations. I recall as a preschooler sitting on the floor while adults had conversations that I was sure they did not want me to hear. As long as I did not move, it seemed for them I did not exist or that they presumed I was incapable of understanding what they were saying. Films and books nearly always underestimate children. It is as if the authors can't remember what it was like, and go for a Disneyfied haze over the lens making children into happy idiots. This movie does not make that error. Steffano Accorsi plays the father. He was also in one of my favourite movies of all time My Secret Life/Ignorant Fairies where he plays a similar warm gentle character.

A wonderful performance from child actress Nina Kervel-Bey cannot redeem this movie's cinematic sin of purveying blatant leftist propaganda. Don't think I've seen so shameless a piece of polemic since casting a curious eye over Leni Riefenstahl's Hitlerite 'Triumph of the will' when I was at film school myself! Incredible that leftists can get away with this kind of pap without provoking the slightest protest from the brain-dead MSM. Predictably, Rotten Tomatoes gives it a high rating, generally seeing it as a charming French comedy of manners, etc, etc. It is nothing of the kind. On the contrary, it runs like a Maoist 'short' showing proto-proletarian little Anna's progress from snotty rich kid to caring-sharing Communist wunderkind. You know the sort of thing: Little Anna (Nina K-B) starts off as a spoiled little brat non-plussed by her parents' sudden lurch into radical chic leftism. They abandon their capitalist jobs and transform into selfless Che Guevara types taking her on demo's in Paris, etc. Gradually little Nina sees the error of her ways and gives up Divinity class at school and her posh friends for a cosy rose-tinted world of brother and sisterly love at the local compo... Ring a ring a roses we all vote socialist. Atishoo! Atishoo! The Capitalists all fall down! Disgusting abuse of the principle of cinema. By all means watch it for Nina K-B's performance, but bring some perfumed smelling salts both to wake yourself up from the toxic dose of Marxism and douse the stink of leftist sanctimony. You have been warned...

In this movie, a young girl's parents start moving in radical circles; and as this means giving up some of her privileges, she doesn't like it. But she's a natural free-thinker (though not yet a rebel), which causes her to question authority on both sides of the political divide. There are some nice observations, but the overall film didn't quite work for me: for example, it ends with the death of Salvador Allende and his last, heroic speech, a story that is great and terrible, but it's hard to believe it would be defining for the character. There are small things to enjoy here, but the film never altogether moves beyond its basic premise.

What impressed me most about this film was how you always know what Anna is feeling. This is partly because of the wonderfully expressive actress playing the part, and partly because it is easy to recall how we felt about things as children and recognize how we would react to the clearly drawn situations of the film. It is also remarkable because while most French movies let you know what characters think simply by having them talk endlessly, Anna keeps her words short and to the point and the adults around her never seem to explain things as much as they ought to.It is interesting to see how people here respond to the film. One review described it as a movie about adults balancing child raising with world saving, which is certainly a part of the film but to me wouldn't seem to be the focus. Someone else saw the film as an example of how activists can be bad parents.But really, this film is so focused on Anna that I tended to feel whatever she was feeling, and as her feelings and understand evolved during the film, mind did as well. The movie feels very balanced, showing everyone's strengths and weaknesses, kindnesses and cruelties, honor and stupidity, and it feels very authentic; I don't know if this is fiction, a memoir or somewhere in between, but it feels very realistic and believable.This is a quiet, thoughtful movie and it took me a while to get into it, perhaps simply because I approach French movies with a certain amount of suspicion, which is why I gave it a 7 instead of an 8. I became more and more drawn in as I watched, and found the final scenes especially touching. It's a lovely little film.