Julie Gavras’s debut feature, “Blame It on Fidel,” is a deceptively simple coming-of-age story about the political awakening of a 9-year-old girl in 1970s France. As a snapshot of a child’s world upended by her parents’ radicalism, it’s a diverting, if schematic, tale that stays grounded through unstinting fidelity to her clueless point of view. But, for a while at least, the film also has an intriguing double life as a cautionary fable about embarking on systemic political change.

When we meet Anna (newcomer Nina Kervel), she’s a happy, headstrong child, snug in the certainty and stability of her upper-middleclass, Catholic upbringing in Paris. Her high marks on the catechism are a source of pride, and she punctiliously observes and enjoys the routines of her meals and activities. She’s a model citizen in the making, and though she does share her parents’ forthright opinions, she speaks out mainly to enforce, not to protest. In the delightful opening scene, she teaches a table full of little wedding guests how to eat an orange with a knife and fork.

Then the boat starts to rock, or rather, change course. Anna’s mother (Julie Depardieu) and Spanish father (Stefano Accorsi) are giving safe haven to the latter’s communist sister and niece, who are newly separated from their patriarch, a prisoner of General Franco. Stung by their own complacence and the father’s guilt of leaving his family behind in Spain, Anna’s parents jump back into the activist fray with a trip to Chile, where revolution is brewing.

When they return, it’s all revolution, all the time. The family picks up stakes and moves to a cramped new apartment, bearded comrades kibbitz in the living room at all hours, and an international array of Marxist nannies take care of Anna and her kid brother after school. (The film’s title comes from Anna’s chats with her anti-Castro housekeeper, who doesn’t stick around.)

“Blame It on Fidel” proceeds to tread territory in a familiar minigenre, in which a child’s innocent, newly fish-out-of-water viewpoint illuminates the brave new world of an altered political reality. (The 2004 film “Machuca,” set in Chile during the overthrow of President Salvador Allende in 1973, is one recent entry.)

Ms. Gavras, who has directed a documentary about schoolchildren, proves sweetly sensitive to Anna’s confusion, her misplaced shame about her new circumstances, and her need to exert some sort of control from her tiny point of influence. The director also shows how Anna’s mother, an activist journalist chronicling women’s issues, arms her daughter well when it comes to sex education, making her a font of knowledge on the Catholic school playground.

But there’s something more than nostalgic or simply character-building about Anna’s experiences. When Anna wrinkles her nose at the moussaka served by her Greek nanny, or gets lost in tear-gas haze at a protest, there’s a distinct sense that “Blame It on Fidel” is not only about a little girl, or even a specific stretch of French history. Even for a child who loves rules, Anna seems given a little too readily to object-lesson mode. “Blame It On Fidel” instead has a bit more up its sleeve: Its directness suggests a more general illustration of the practical challenges of political change of any kind. Anna represents the satisfied population at large, resistant to rapid change and understandably attached to such quaint ideas as wanting (and buying) stuff. Her parents’ confidence in the rightness of their ideology and belief in the necessity of reform do not magically make it easier to execute reform.

This aspect of the movie benefits from a child’s attunement to routine and custom. Anna’s gut objections demonstrate how and where the abstractions of radical change might actually play out and hit home: society (anxiety about having a friend over to her tiny, newly boisterous household); family(the lingering worry of disapproval and distance from her country-estate-owning grandparents), and culture (the basic, inexplicable affront of bizarre, mushy dishes outside the usual Gallic fare), not to mention religion.

Anna, perhaps unsurprisingly, comes around, though Ms. Kervel’s natural feistiness makes the change feel a little less obligatory. Still, it’s a curious dynamic — here’s a constituency that can be sent to its room if it doesn’t go along. To Ms. Gavras’s credit, when Anna’s father explains people’s sheep-like tendencies, Anna innocently asks by way of diligent follow-up, how he’s sure that he’s not simply conforming, too, when he’s part of the dissenting crowd.

“Blame It on Fidel,” which is seamlessly adapted from a novel by Domitilla Calamai set in Italy, suffers a bit from an overly glancing approach to Anna’s parents, who (when it comes to their daughter) seem self-absorbed to an extent not fully examined.

As a side-note, Ms. Gavras’s father is the storied political director of “Z” and “Missing,” known simply as Costa-Gavras. But whether or not there’s an autobiographical strand at work, Ms. Gavras has managed an entertaining debut by showing how the political is most definitely personal in a child’s eyes.