 |
That seems just. This sombre film, which played the Toronto film festival last September under its French title Est-Ouest, is no match for Pedro Almodovar's razzle-dazzle.
Instead, director and co-writer Regis Wargnier (best known for an earlier Oscar-nominated film Indochine) tackles another heavy historical saga. This one is a tale of Russian ex-patriots who eagerly return home to the Soviet Union from France in 1946 only to face the horrors of police state terror, torture, exile and, for some, summary execution.
The film is dignified and important and rings with a sense of honour and truth. Basing it on real-life testimonies gathered in research, Wargnier co-wrote it with a French collaborator, Louis Gardel, and two prominent Russian screenwriters, Serguei Bodrov and Roustam Ibraguimbekov. It plays in French (with English subtitles) and some Russian.
Honour and truth may not be enough, however. East-West is relentlessly depressing and sometimes tedious.
The story follows the misfortunes of a dashing Russian-born French doctor (Oleg Menchikov) who heeds Josef Stalin's call for a triumphant return of ex-pats. He brings with him his French wife (Sandrine Bonnaire) and their son (played by several actors as the years pass). Triumph turns to shame, humiliation and, for some, instant death when the boat docks in Odessa.
The doctor and his family are sent to Kiev and treated like spies, although his medical training is used to advantage. The movie chronicles the next several decades of their monumental suffering. The only hope for the family -- and Bonnaire's character in particular -- comes from intervention by a leftist French actress (played by Wargnier's Indochine star Catherine Deneuve) who has come to realize the difference between socialism and Soviet dictatorship.
East-West is well acted, particularly by Menchikov and Bonnaire. Deneuve does a decent job and has one remarkable scene in which she stays in costume from an historical play while she leaps into action in the 'real' world.
Nevertheless -- and this is the same problem I had with Indochine -- the historical tale seems lumbering, gigantic and play-acted. Wargnier's style never lets us forget we are watching a film unfolding before our eyes. That robs the story of its passion and its energy.
(This film is rated PG)