Susan Granger’s review of “EAST-WEST” (Sony Pictures Classics)
Oscar-nominated as best foreign film, France’s “East-West” begins in 1946, when Stalin launched a propaganda campaign aimed at Russian emigrants living in the West, offering amnesty and a chance to participate in the post-war reconstruction of the USSR. So an idealistic physician (Oleg Menchikov), his French wife (Sandrine Bonnaire), and their young son return to his homeland with high hopes of a bright future. But as soon as they land in Odessa, they discover they’ve been duped. The zealous military is convinced that 90% of the expatriates are “imperialist spies” and, as such, are subject to constant supervision and brutal interrogation. The doctor and his family are assigned to a tiny apartment in a dilapidated building which houses five other families who share a communal bathroom and whatever black-market goods they can steal. “They can’t force us to stay,” the wife reasons. But her husband knows otherwise, begging, “Forgive me.” While he works within the system, trying to secure his family’s release, she becomes involved with a passionate, 17 year-old competitive swimmer (Serguei Bodrov Jr.) who is just as eager to escape as she is. Then a visiting French actress, Catherine Deneuve, offers the victims a glimmer of hope. Writer/director Regis Wargnier (“Indochine”) captures the dismal dreariness of social repression and political enslavement but fails to create compelling, three-dimensional characters. For example, after two years in a Soviet labor camp, Sandrine Bonnaire emerges looking exquisite – with perfectly manicured fingernails – and the escape “attempt” at night in a wintry sea is so far-fetched that it strains credulity. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “East-West” is a bleak, flimsy 5. It’s too slick and simplistic to be truly engaging entertainment.
