Herald rating: * * *
Cast: Sandrine Bonnaire, Oleg Menchikov, Catherine Deneuve, Sergei Bodrov Jr
Director: Regis Wargnier
Running time: 115 mins
Rating: M
Screening: Rialto, Berkely cinemas from Thursday
Review: Peter Calder
Stalin's postwar campaign to entice Russian emigres in the West to return and rebuild the motherland is the basis of this accomplished and moving film by the man who gave us the sentimental and revisionist Indochine.
Doctor Aleksei Golovine (Menchikov) and his French wife, Marie (Bonnaire) through whose individual story the larger history is told, were part of a privileged Parisian middle class. But landing in Kiev, they and their young son share a dingy and cramped apartment with a group of bitter lowlifes and shady telltales.
What drives the drama is that this small family is anything but united in adversity. Aleksei wants to comply with the authorities to protect the family; Marie, distraught by the destruction of her passport, is desperate to get back home.
The film attracted criticism in France for its supposedly immoderate anti-communism - and it's true that its secret policemen are goonish caricatures - but the undeniable terror of Stalinism is compellingly recreated.
It's an old-fashioned screen epic (though economical in length) which is at times swamped by its lush soundtrack music. What stops it from lapsing completely into historical melodrama is that it focuses on a marriage under pressure as much as on a country melting down.
Aleksei and Marie are complicated characters - Aleksei's shadowy motivation, which delivers a surprise ending, is at the heart of the drama - and the central performances are subtle and textured. By contrast, Deneuve, as a visiting actress who may be the key to the Golovines' salvation, seems merely a cypher.
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