In Radu Mihaileanu’s The Concert, a French and Russian production, Aleksei Guskov plays Andreï Filipov, also called “The Maestro,” the former conductor of the Bolshoi Orchestra in Moscow. Twenty years before film begins, he was thrown out of his position because he refused to release the Jewish members of his orchestra. The Maestro’s baton was broken in half by a Communist official during a performance of a Tchaikovsky concerto, and since then he has been unable to resurrect his career. In fact, after the fall of Soviet Russia, Filipov ends up as the custodian in his former orchestra’s building.

One day at work, the maestro intercepts a fax from the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, inviting the Bolshoi Orchestra to come perform in two weeks. Filipov decides to stage a comeback by posing as the director of the Bolshoi, throwing together a full orchestra, and travelling to Paris to perform the concert. First, he must round up his old gang, which consists of stereotypical Jews (neurotic and money-obsessed) and sketchy gypsies (whose black market skills get them to Paris). His former musicians are universally broke, and they have degenerated into a group of bumbling idiots.

It is only after meeting this motley crew that it becomes clear that The Concert is a comedy. Through a series of mishaps and antics, the makeshift orchestra finds themselves in France, where they engage in broad European culture clashes. What begins as the touching portrait of a broken artist, with a sincere performance by Guskov at its center, becomes an increasingly annoying piece of comic fluff.

Into this buffoonery enters the film’s female lead, Anne-Marie Jacquet (Melanie Laurent, Inglorious Basterds), who plays a world-renowned violinist whom The Maestro manages to book for their Paris concert. Laurent is a graceful actress, and Mihaileanu develops a convoluted emotional subplot surrounding her character. But her work here seems to belong in a different movie.

There is also music – a lot of it. The Concert has extended sequences of pure concert footage, complete with close-ups of sweating musicians, their faces contorting into various states of concentration and euphoria. The Concert makes you think of films that are more successful in integrating long passages of music into a dramatic story, movies like Amadeus and Shine, or even Coco & Igor, currently playing at the Angelika. These films manage to make its audience feel the dramatic weight of the music. If a film revolves around a complex classical composition, the music must become a character, with its own introduction and development, with which the musician can struggle and triumph. Beyond the fact that the Maestro was playing this Tchaikovsky concerto on the day his life was ruined, we never understand the significance of the music on its own terms. Its beauty is lost to us.

Photo: Aleksei Guskov and Melanie Laurent in The Concert (Courtesy photo).