“Farewell” features strong lead performances from two directors-turned-actors in a story of Russian espionage. One is Emir Kusturica, in whose films “Black Cat, White Cat” and “Underground” we got some of the best Eastern European films of the late ’90s. The other is Guillaume Canet, the French director of the very exciting 2006 thriller “Tell No One,” who has a long acting résumé.
In “Farewell” they make an interesting pair, as Kusturica plays Sergei Gregoriev, a Soviet colonel who has grown disillusioned with life under communism. He is looking to leak state secrets in order to have a better life for his son, whom he rarely talks to, and his wife, whom he is cheating on with his secretary.