# Est-ouest (1999)

### reviewed by
Harvey S. Karten

    EAST-WEST (Est-Oest)

Reviewed by Harvey Karten Sony Pictures Classics Director: Regis Wargnier Writer: Serguei Bodrov, Louis Gardel, Roustam Ibraguimbek, Regis Wargnier Cast: Sandrine Bonnaire, Oleg Menshikov, Catherine Deneuve, Sergei Bodrov Jr., Ruben Tupiero, Erwan Baynaud, Grigori Manukov, Tatyana Dogileva, Bogdan Stupka, Meglena Karalambova, Atanass Atanassov, Tania Massalitinova

Shortly after the American troops withdrew from Vietnam in 1975, those U.S. citizens who fled to Canada and Sweden to dodge the draft were invited to return without threat of punishment. All was forgiven, and a new spirit of brotherhood was to usher in. Meanwhile, decades earlier, in 1946, Stalin announced that all Russians who fled his country to the West during the tumultuous days of the Russian Revolution were invited to come back to work for a the rebirth of the New Man.

Which group of temporary expatriates--the Americans or the Russians--fared better? You guessed right. The Americans might have been resented by some of their neighbors for a while, but in a short time no one really remembered who had fought in Vietnam and who had evaded the call to arms. The Russian government, by contrast, was about as trustworthy of Saddam Hussein when that Iraqi dictator invited his brother-in-law to return to Baghdad, at which time Saddam had the poor man executed. In the case of Regis Wargnier's movie "East-West," which is based on a true story, no sooner did Russians returning from France to Odessa set foot on the soil of their beloved country than they were virtually all either executed for their betrayal of the homeland or sent to labor camps in remote areas. A few exceptions were made for people whose skills could be useful.

"East-West" is the story of one Russian man living abroad in France for years whose skills as a doctor would prove useful to the Stalinist regime and who was therefore allowed to live. Shipped out to Kiev in the Ukraine together with his wife--a French citizen who followed her husband out of a sense of duty and devotion and not because of any affection for a foreign state--the two learned the meaning of freedom the hard way.

I wouldn't blame some critics for looking on East-West as a political tract. It is so anti-Russian, so virulently opposed to the first Communist state, that it appears to have been written and directed by right-wing diehards. The realists among us who are quite familiar with man's inhumanity to man know that this is not true. Those who lived thorough the forties and those who did not but who are history buffs who kept up on their reading are familiar with the horrendous state of affairs in Russia since their glorious revolution of 1917. We know that Stalin may have killed even more people than Hitler, some estimating that up to thirty million of his own people were either executed outright or perished in labor camps, many quite innocent of any crimes against the state. The motive? Simply to keep the Soviet people terrorized. The informants--shown regularly through this tense film--are based on true characters, folks who thought like the envious Spaniards during that country's Inquisition, and who freely phoned the authorities to denounce people they did not like, accusing them of anti-state activities. It's all here in "East- West," which is France's entry to the Oscar competition and which had its initial run at the Toronto Film Festival.

Director Wargnier--whose 1992 film "Indochine" featured Catherine Deneuve as a rich landowner who adopted a Vietnamese girl and had to contend with the girl's spirit of independence later on--is more obviously political this time around. The story, filmed largely in the Bulgarian capital of Sophia with a local crew often suspicious of the French production team, features the lovely Sandrine Bonnaire as Marie and Oleg Menshikov as her naive husband, Alexie Golovin. Following Alexie unwillingly back to Russia in the midst of Stalin's alleged pardon, she realizes her mistake during her very first week as the couple are assigned to stay in a cramped communal apartment with co-tenants which include a drunk, a whore, and one sympathetic old woman who used to be the landlady of the residence. But physical discomforts take second priority when Marie witnesses the arrest of the elderly woman--whose only crime is that she joined Marie in singing a French song and is thereby accused of collaboration with the imperialists. Desperate to leave and return to France--something that authorities would never permit--she eventually locks her husband out, takes up with the dead woman's 17-year-old grandson Sacha (Sergei Bodrov Jr.), and becomes enmeshed in an involved plan to flee the country with the help of a wandering French theater group headed by actress Gabrielle Develay (Catherine Deneuve).

This wonderfully acted drama, smartly scored (featuring some concert songs by a Red-Army-Band sort of troupe), is quite unlike American political thrillers. You'll be disappointed if you expect explosions, endless rounds of machine gun firing, bold leaps across rising drawbridges, and hot erotic scenes. Only a single gunshot is fired, off screen, and the only physical violence is that carried out by a zealous government official (Grigori Manoukov) who beats Marie senseless to force a confession.

The 1940s were the big, bad years for the Soviet Union under Stalin's iron hand. Wargnier is not necessarily opposed to what is going on in Russia today but he sure as heck is no Stalinist. We needn't wonder that when World War Two involved the Soviet Union with Germany in June 1941, many in the West were hopeful that these nations, both with evil governments, would make caviar schnitzel of each other. "East-West" is an important film with actors that are wholly committed to its seriousness, one which deserves to be seen by anyone who still has fantasies that the Soviet government ever practiced Communism the way Karl Marx would have intended.

Not Rated. Running Time: 120 minutes. (C) 2000 Harvey Karten, film_critic@compuserve.com

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