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Review
In a world where interested parties in France or Russia can read
this review with ease, it’s difficult to imagine that in 1946
— when the USSR offered Soviet passports and an ostensibly warm
welcome to those who had left Mother Russia and wished to return
— Russia was light-tight to outsiders. Rather than a warm welcome,
many returnees found hot lead and a cold grave courtesy of Comrade
Stalin. The only thing worse than a fake amnesty is a wobbly melodrama.
East-West takes the not uninteresting premise of
a Russian doctor repatriating with his French wife and son only
to be subjected to humiliation and hardship, and renders it as
run of the mill as vodka at a Russian wedding. A love story set
against a political backdrop, Regis Wargnier’s uneven tale makes
even hip viewers feel like Red squares.
“They can’t keep us here against our will,” says Marie (Sandrine
Bonnaire) to Alexei (Oleg Menhikov). Alexi doesn’t even bother
to formulate an answer. He knows he’s made the blunder of a lifetime
and they’re stuck for good. Then again, they’re lucky to be alive,
even if they are sharing a communal apartment with scruffy boarders
of uncertain allegiences. All of their fellow passengers on the
boat over are either dead or wish they were; Alexi was spared
only because his medical skills are needed.
While their son becomes proficient in Russian, Alexi is assigned
to a factory and Marie irons costumes for a choir . But the strain
on their marriage is considerable. Alexi is soon shacked up with
the woman across the hall and Marie is encouraging young Sasha
(Sergei Bodrov Jr) to perfect his swimming skills so he can attend
a meet abroad, defect and get her the hell out of there.
Marie also takes the dangerous step of contacting visiting French
actress Gabrielle Develay (Catherine Deneuve), in hopes that a
friend in the free world can do something. Gabrielle promises
to help but proper channels prove useless since Marie no longer
has a French passport. Alexi appears to become a model citizen
while Marie seems like more and more of a detriment to his career.
There are harrowing times ahead for all concerned.
The shock of people being arrested in their homes and trundled
off on unspecified charges should never seem pedestrian and yet
anybody who goes to the movies has seen enough trenchcoats to
know that government thugs will be thuggish, informers will inform
and, uh, Democracy is a much groovier system than Communism.
The film is nicely shot (with Bulgaria and the Ukraine standing
in for 1940s Kiev) and the Franco-Russian cast is fine. But what
should be wrenching is merely mildly suspenseful. And the ending
is so gruff and abrupt you may think the film broke in the projector.
Then again, compared to The Barber of Siberia, this
film is a model of cogent intrigue.
Maybe the record-breaking stock market decline of mid-April put
American audiences in the mood for a movie about drabness, opression
and penury. Or maybe it’s a Russian plot to lure Yanks into theaters.
For it certainly can’t be the narrative qualities of East-West
that have earned it a warm response in the U.S. The film did so-so
business in France — perhaps because Cold War intrigue told with
strokes as subtle as a hammer and sickle on a couture runway are
of scant interest to the masses in Gaul, where the French Socialist
Party is currently in power and the only commies are dot-commies.
FilmFestivals.com
reporter
Lisa Nesselson
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