Many nations have been enthralled by the history, culture, fashion and foods of France. However, Russia and Turkey hold special places in the list of countries that have tried to refashion themselves after the French model, not always with sustainable results. Both nations are still trying to understand the roots of this fascination and artists are still trying to somehow "write back" to a culture that has influenced theirs so deeply."Francofonia," a film by Director Alexander Sokurov, is a documentary of the history of the Louvre Museum on the surface but also, in effect, a modern exploration of Russia's complex relationship with European countries - not only with France but also with Germany - and, therefore, "Western Europe." In fact, as this film lulls you into thinking that it is about the Louvre Museum, the French hubris and conservation of historical artifacts, it saves its bitter message until the end, slowly working up to the question so poignantly presented by Sokurov: "What of European heritage is worth saving?" The director does an excellent job of convincing the viewer that European heritage, during World War II at least, had a lot at stake and did not include the Russian one.This is Sokurov's second film centered on a museum - the first being, naturally, about the Hermitage. "The Russian Ark," a film made in 2002, was much talked about as the longest single camera shot in film history and was not as well known for examining museum artifacts. "Francofonia," in stark contrast to "Russian Ark," is a film divided into several narratives. The framing one is the one in which Sokurov is monitoring a ship on the high seas that is apparently carrying artworks. We see the ship battling storms and hear some semi-intelligible radio talk about saving the cargo. This then leads to a Russian voice-over in which Sokurov philosophizes about the ways in which we look at, venerate, conserve and store artworks. Sokurov's discussion of the history of art revolves around the human fascination with faces, how we love looking at them, how we are thrilled by the similarities and differences we notice in them. How, through them, we identify the human in each other, or make judgments about the humanity of the other according to how much those faces resemble ours.Apart from the overarching frame of the present time when this cargo ship seems to be lost at sea, there is black and white footage of the occupation of Paris by the Germans, re-enactments of what happened when the Germans tried to take over the Louvre and then sequences in which Napoleon struts about the Louvre, puffs up his chest and declares, "All this is here because of me," pointing to several artworks. All this may sound a bit disorienting, but fear not, it works and the sections hang together beautifully thanks to the masterful direction of Sokurov. There are beautiful drone shots of Paris and the Louvre, which are then seamlessly welded into sepia-colored new footage of German planes over the museum, reminding us that a cinematographer's tool we appreciate is part of the machinery of war today. There are many transition moments like this in the film; when you think you have pinned down the meaning of something, Sokurov turns it around and makes you look at it from another angle, another period of history, another color palette, or indeed, another genre.The occupation re-enactment scenes are taken up mostly by conversations between the French director of the Louvre, Monsieur Jaujard, and Count Metternich, the German officer who has been appointed to take the museum over from the French. When they meet, Metternich says: "You are the first high French official I have seen at his post. Do you speak German?" "No," answers Jaujard, "I'm very French" and you can't begrudge him this answer as his surname does indeed look and sound as French as can be. Jaujard's initial manner towards Metternich suggests that Germany is already too "eastern," too close to the barbarians. We learn that when it became apparent that Paris was going to fall, the lighter objects such as paintings were carried to country houses in France, so when the Germans came to take over the museum, all that was left were statues and bits and pieces from Egypt, in other words Napoleon's loot, which Sokurov repeatedly, and seemingly without any irony, keeps referring to as "war trophies." There are conversations between Jaujard and Metternich with long silences that suggests a gentleman's agreement between the two European nations: Germany will not scourge the country looking for the artworks that have been stored elsewhere, open the Louvre with its remaining wonders, and try to talk Jaujard into revealing these items' whereabouts. Jaujard and Metternich also provide a moving and, at least for me, an unexpected moment of pathos, a strange breaking of the fourth wall towards the end of the film. They are taken to a room where they are told how their lives will end. They take the news as composedly as you would expect such grave men to do. This is the moment where you feel Sokurov's hand as the puppet master, moving his marionettes this way and that mercilessly."What is the Louvre?" asks Sokurov as a refrain throughout his narrative. The museum turns out to be a potent symbol for European heritage, a treasure chest that includes art both from Europe and the regions of the world the continent has exploited. Having made us believe we're watching a film about the Louvre and how art unites the elite even during times of war, Sokurov then confronts us with black and white footage from Leningrad under German siege. He tells us about the harsh conditions in the besieged town, how the people starved and how because of the frozen ground it was impossible to bury the people dying at an alarming rate. The faces in Leningrad, Sukorov seems to be saying, did not look like the ones the Germans would have encountered in the Louvre paintings they were after, not to a degree that would require them to be saved. No gentlemen's agreement with the Fascist Germans and the Bolshevik Russians whose heritage was eastern enough to be fair game, to be transported to Germany, not to be open to public view, supposedly in situ, as in the Louvre.The film works to evoke the Louvre as an idea, an idea that Joseph Conrad, another Eastern European, describes in his novel "Heart of Darkness" as "something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to." While Sokurov suggests that Russian lives and heritage was one such sacrifice, he doesn't have anything to say about the Middle Eastern and African lives and heritages that have been sacrificed for the creation of the Louvre. His central concern is Russia's relationship with Western Europe, and leaves the question of the Louvre's foundations of French imperial exploitation to be asked by filmmakers from Egypt, Syria and beyond.