(rated PG-13, 121 mins.)
Opens early April
A well-deserved French Entry for Oscars and a Golden Globe nominee for Best Foreign Language Film, comes the incredibly passionate love story drama about a couple who return to the husband’s mother country of Russia after living happily in France.
It is June 1946, and Stalin launches a vast propaganda campaign aimed at Russian emigrants living in the West, offering them amnesty, a Soviet passport and the chance to participate in the post-war reconstruction of the USSR. From the moment, Alexei Golovine, his lovely wife, Marie and their son Serioja arrive, they are instantly controlled and consumed into manipulation and emotional torture. Immediately, the audience is drawn into the turmoil and bond shared between this happy couple, that slowly demises over unexpected issues of trust, bizarre set of circumstances, and the pursuit of freedom, all which ring strongly throughout the film.
The very beautiful and compelling Sandrine Bonnaire portrays Marie with an attitude of “freedom at all costs!” Oleg Menchikov as Alexei her husband with Catherine Deneuve as Gabrielle the actress who tries to assist Marie in her escape from Russia. The movie overflows with heart-pulling moments that are reminiscent of watching “Sound Of Music” in the scene where the Von Trapps escape Austria to climb the mountains to freedom. This story delivers twice the elegance and drama that the Oscar winning “English Patient” did. East-West reunites Deneuve and co-writer-director Regis Wargnier, who scored big-time with 1992’s “Indochine.”