Not so much as ‘coming of age’ as a ‘coming to terms’ story, Blame it On Fidel poses an intriguing ‘What if?’. Nowadays, a sharp left turn in political leanings would have little effect on lifestyle but this film suggests things were different in 1970’s Paris. Detailed recreation of interiors and excellent cinematography add conviction to a child's experience of change.

Quirky guitar music signals a choice of comedy genre for the director’s first feature; changed political beliefs taken to logical extremes are mined for laughs when seen from a child’s point of view. Anna, (Nina Kervel) prissy nine-year-old girl daughter of Spanish-born lawyer Fernando (Stefano Accorsi) and fashion magazine writer Marie (Julie Depardieu) attempts to make sense of sudden changes when her parents espouse left-wing politics. We share her sense of confusion whilst laughing at her reactions and to a lesser extent those of her four-year-old brother, Francois (Benjamin Feuillet). He learns that Mickey Mouse is a fascist and modifies pretend fights to include ‘Hands up! This is a Putsch!’, whilst the more thoughtful Anna tries to fathom the reasoning behind the new ‘rules’

Her naïve struggles provide the film’s chief appeal, made funnier by Anna’s stubborn resistance to change. Conversations with classmates and adults form one of the funniest strands in a highly entertaining film. First seen teaching underage guests at a wedding how to eat peaches with a knife and fork, and smugly noting their ineptitude, she copies the gestures and stance of the bourgeois champagne-sipping adults. Anna revels in the orderly routines of life in her privileged home and Catholic school, as competitive about essays marks as she is in swimming contests. It’s a pity she forgets to hand on the baton in a relay race, but that’s just the starting point in her transformation. The road from ardent young individualist to participant in group solidarity is a long haul for Anna.

Here the excellent casting of the central character is crucial; we might feel sorrier for Anna if she weren’t such a spoilt and self-assured prig, mistress of the thin-lipped disapproving stare and irritating question. The parents, whilst competent and sympathetic, are less clearly drawn, perhaps because their views and lifestyles are so radically changed in such a sort time.

The credibility issue does not detain us long. Fernando is guilt-stricken when his distraught sister Marga (Mar Sodupe) tells him her husband died fighting Fascism. A Communist, he was never mentioned in the family. In fact, as their Cuban nanny tells the children, all Communists are evil, and are readily identified by their beards. Anna, convinced of the importance of grooming and dress, beliefs reinforced by her maternal grandparents (Oliver Perrier, Martine Chevallier)whispers ‘Are they gypsies? when her mother introduces her to a sandaled group of feminists. The line between ‘group solidarity’ and sheep-like acquiescence to majority opinion is just another lesson for Anna to assimilate between the move from house to cramped flat and the succession of foreign nannies with different cooking styles and creation-myths. At school, in line with her parent’s new-found honesty, Anna is excused catechism classes, driving a wedge between her and her schoolmates. In a home filled with bearded foreign militants and oppressed women whose stories her mother is making into a book, Anna’s confusion increases.

Julie Gavras’s previous films were documentaries. It isn’t surprising that the daughter of left –wing filmmaker Constantin Costa-Gavras includes scenes with political messages, such as Anna playing ‘shop’ with bemused young militants, urging them to buy goods so they can sell them on at a profit. The response –to divide and share an orange – strikes a didactic note in a film which mainly takes a satirical view of ideological clashes. A parallel scene is that where Anna’s grandfather shows her a fox’s paw, gnawed off and left in a trap - a metaphor for social change whose sombre tone is uncharacteristic of the film as a whole.

The scene where the children join the group’s victory anthem after a nail-biting wait for an election result is a moving climax which foreshadows the resolution. Following Anna’s rhetorical ‘So no one’s sure about anything?’ a visit to her father’s ancestral estate near Toledo leads to an appreciation of her father’s guilty motivation. Her remark in class that her grandparents ‘tortured people on tables’ ( a misunderstanding about their name) shocks her teacher but shows Anna accepting an alternative view of privilege and power. The logic of the final scene, as Anna joins the games in a noisy multi-cultural playground is a natural conclusion to skilfully sequenced events in this impressive feature debut.