Film: Never the Twain. - Review - movie review

National Review, May 22, 2000 by John Simon

IN Regis Wargnier's East-West, based on a true story, East and West meet over the very screenplay, which is by Rustam Ibragimbekov, Sergei Bodrov, Louis Gardel, and Wargnier. Though the film is mostly in French, quite a bit of it is in Russian, and the cast is both Russian and French. The story concerns a number of Russian emigres who, after World War II, were coaxed by the Soviets into returning to live in their homeland. Instead of the promised warm reception, they are sent to labor camps or executed. Our hero, Aleksei Golovin, a much-needed doctor, is spared. He and his French wife, Marie, and young son, Seryozha, are assigned to a single room in a communal apartment in Kiev, where Aleksei is posted to the infirmary of a textile factory.

The crampedness, lack of privacy, petty wrangling among the tenants, snooping informers within the komunalka, make the Golovins' life appalling. When Marie tries to get a visa to go back to France, the vicious (and often murderous) commissar Pirogov merely tears up her passport. Aleksei, partly out of love for the motherland, partly out of necessity, pursues a cunctatory course, playing along with the authorities while hoping for some future amelioration. Over this, the marriage deteriorates. The head of the komunalka, a nice old lady who commiserated with Marie (in French!), is denounced and executed; her 17-year-old grandson, Sasha, becomes Marie's only confidant.

She helps Sasha develop into an Olym pic swimmer, which should lead to competing abroad and defection. She also befriends Gabrielle, a famous French actress on tour in Kiev, who promises to help her get out. By this time, Aleksei has become a seemingly perfect government toady, and even intercepts Gabrielle's letters to Marie. Marital relations between them cease, and Aleksei becomes involved with his factory's (female) director.

Years pass, but Marie and Sasha are repeatedly foiled in their escape plans, even as their relationship becomes closer. There are scary, depressing, and sometimes even exhilarating adventures as Alek sei becomes the bedmate of a vulgar neighbor woman, and Seryozha is buffeted between his parents. That is enough plot summary, though there is plenty more.

East-West is a mixture of sharply observed political and psychological detail with melodramatic events that, however true, preclude much deepening beyond the thriller level. Yet the mixture is artfully handled, and, except for Pirogov, the characters tend not to be all black or white. Marie herself becomes hard, but in the end manages some conjugal feelings for Aleksei, who proves to have genuinely redeeming features.

The dialogue is intelligent throughout, the suspense always riveting. Amazingly, two of the principals-Oleg Menchikov as Aleksei, and Sergei Bodrov Jr. as Sasha-being mono lingual, had to learn their French lines by rote. They came through remarkably, although Sandrine Bonnaire (Marie) later observed how weird it was when Menchikov, with whom she hardly communicated offscreen, suddenly spoke his part in near-perfect French. Under such difficult circumstances, the smoothness achieved is impressive; as Gabrielle, Catherine Deneuve provides condignly staunch support.

Backed up by an efficient score from Patrick Doyle and atmospheric cinematography from Laurent Dailland, Wargnier has directed with a fine sense for minute particulars and powerful use of crosscutting. Mlle Bonnaire, always a trenchant actress, has grown with age into a softer, maturer, more womanly presence. East-West is not a great film, but, until such a one comes along, will do very nicely.

In Stuart Blumberg's screenplay for Keep ing the Faith is a wonder of manipulation and derivativeness. A tom boyish girl and the two young boys who grow up to become rivals in love for her is as old a topos as ever dragged its beard through fiction, drama, or film. As a boy, I loved Percival C. Wren's Beau Geste and its sequels, and enjoyed, if I remember correctly, something similar in Sinclair Lewis's Ann Vickers. In due time, I progressed to Wuthering Heights and Thomas Mann's Tonio Kroger.

In Keeping the Faith, it is the Jewish Jake and the Catholic Brian and Anna who had wonderful fun in the not-so-mean streets of New York until Anna's family moved to the West Coast. Jake became a rabbi, Brian a priest, and Anna a high-powered business executive. Later, she is transferred to a spectacular New York office, where she relaxes by spying through binoculars on sexual mischief in a facing skyscraper.

Anna resumes her friendship with Brian and Jake, both of whom she finds charming and attractive, and both of whom fall in love with her. Jake's problem has been that he cannot find the right woman, not even with the help of his oversolicitous mother. Brian's problem is that he is a priest. Both men are unconventional men of God: Brian preaches things like "God doesn't like solo artists. We're gonna be the Fugees here, no Lauryn Hills." To goose up his congregation's singing, Jake springs a black gospel choir on the vocally slack faithful. Obviously, both draw capacity crowds to their houses of worship.