Paris Song (2018)

This is one of those films too obscure for its own Wikipedia page, tho it gets a brief mention on director Jeff Vespa's. I probably wouldn't have noticed it if not for its inclusion in a Jewish film festival. (Judaism doesn't really feature in the plot.) But the few dozen people to have rated it on IMDb had given it an 8.0, and the plot sounded interesting. Besides, Vespa himself would be at the theater to talk about it, so my parents and I went.

In 1925, Amre Kashaubayev is invited from the Kazakh Steppe to represent the USSR in a sing-off in Paris. He accepts, partly because he wants to call the outside world's attention to the Kazakh people, many of whom want independence. Of course, Soviet officials would prefer that Leonid Sobinov place higher. They don't want Kashaubayev consorting much with westerners like George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, and Lee Abbott. And they definitely don't want him making contact with Mustafa Shokay, exiled leader of the Kazakh independence movement. You should have a good idea what happens.

According to Vespa, even Kazakhstan, which has named schools after Kashaubayev, hardly knows anything about him today. I suppose his rural home area had a low population, and it wasn't hard for the USSR to suppress knowledge of him. As a result, I'm sure the filmmakers had to take a lot of liberties. Maybe Kashaubayev and Abbott were never friends with benefits. Maybe he and Gershwin didn't even spend much time together.

One of the clearer liberties is that Kashaubayev seems to have no language barrier when he arrives in Paris. Vespa admits that he omitted the translator for simplicity. The film also slightly downplays just how hard a time Kashaubayev had at the hands of his government. I realize that they couldn't touch Shokay without answering to the French government, but I didn't think they could drag a guest singer away in broad daylight. Even Gershwin doesn't dare use his celebrity status as leverage to interfere.

At 90 minutes, PS is remarkably brisk (a welcome relief from my previous viewing), generally gliding over details such as those of Kashaubayev being a fish out of water. Only a few musical performances last more than a minute. In addition to the factor of sparse source material, I notice that Vespa had never directed a full-length feature before.

The in-story music sounds nice regardless of genre, and Kashaubayev's tenor is handsome enough that I can understand how he'd do so well in the competition despite notable disadvantages -- and how he'd win the strong support of appointed minder Anton Lebedev. It's the background music I take issue with. Sometimes it tries cartoonishly hard to drive home the point that Soviet authorities are scary. Sometimes it overlays Kashaubayev's songs with an undue western quality. I dunno; maybe it helps with mass appeal.

The other big selling point is in the visuals. PS might just have the prettiest French scenery I've seen on screen, unless my judgment was swayed by what else was going on. You might say that it fits a running theme of Kashaubayev finding music in ordinary sounds -- more broadly, finding beauty everywhere, even in the face of oppression.

Before leaving the theater, we were asked to rate the movie on a 1-to-5 scale. My parents chose 5. I gave it a 4 (akin to the 8.0?), because I reserve 5 for the ones that wow me. This is hardly a mark of shame for PS. See it when you're up for an obscure musician's biopic.