Entertainment

It strikes the wrong chord

‘The Concert” is an art-house trap, the cinematic equivalent of one of those salads that turns out to have more calories than a Big Mac. And for the same reason: gobs of thick, sweet dressing.

The movie is a broad comedy and a shameless hunk of sentimentality that puts swanky trappings (in this case, orchestral classical music in Paris) on a cardboard script. And it’s all leading up to a Big Reveal that is concealed from us, and from certain characters, for no reason except it makes for a smashing ending. Pardon me if I’m cynical about cynicism.

Writer-director Radu Milhaileanu’s film begins in contemporary Russia, where a once-renowned conductor named Andrei (Alexei Guskov) is the janitor at the home of the same Bolshoi Orchestra he once led. In the boss’ office, he notices an invitation for the orchestra to play in Paris, so he decides to conceal this from the boss, assemble his own imitation Bolshoi and take them to Paris instead.

It turns out Andrei was dismissed as conductor in the first place because he refused to fire Jewish musicians during a purge in 1980, and the KGB took away his baton in the middle of his favorite piece. That is Tchaikovsky’s Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, which he believes exemplifies harmony in its purest form. As he plans for Paris, he asks France’s most renowned violinist (Mélanie Laurent of “Inglourious Basterds”) to join the orchestra for the solo.

What follows is a wheezy, let’s-get-the-old-gang-together series of would-be comic scenes, rim-shot dialogue and lots of craziness centered on the antics of the gypsies in the orchestra. The more frantically the actors behave, the less funny they are.

All the broad comedy is just misdirection intended to magnify the power of a sentimental ending, but the sadness of the finale feels like the obverse of the counterfeit merriment that dominates the rest.