Those who delight in stereotypes (Jews like money)may be attracted to The Concert. Andrei Filipov (Aleksei Guskov) pushes a broom at the Bolshoi. Thirty years before, under Brezhnev, he lost his status there as star conductor for refusing to fire his Jewish musicians.
Intercepting a fax from the Théâtre du Châtelet inviting the legendary orchestra to perform in Paris, Andrei rounds up his former colleagues in a scheme to pass themselves off as the real Bolshoi.
To right an old injustice — and to occasion interminable flashbacks — the fallen maestro insists that young violinist Anne-Marie Jacquet (Laurent) be the soloist during the performance of Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto.
Witless director Radu Mihaileanu, continuing the theme of false identity from his previous Live and Become (2005), holds the following truths to be self-evident: Nothing is funnier than a Russian speaking syntactically absurd French (except maybe a half-empty Communist meeting hall). And nothing salves historical and ego wounds quite like 12 minutes of bombastic strings.
