Synopsis
June 1946: Stalin invites Russian emigres to return to the motherland. It's a trap: when a ship-load from France arrives in Odessa, only a physician and his family are spared execution or prison. He and his French wife (her passport ripped up) are sent to Kiev. She wants to return to France immediately; he knows that they are captives and must watch every step.
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Cast
- Catherine DeneuveGabrielle Develay
- Sandrine BonnaireMarie
- Oleg MenshikovAleksei Golovin
- Sergei Bodrov Jr.Sasha Vasilyev
- Tatyana DogilevaOlga
- Bohdan StupkaColonel Boyko
- Ruben TapieroSeryozha, à 7 ans
- Erwan BaynaudSeryozha, à 14 ans
- Grigori ManoukovPirogov
- Meglena KaralambovaNina Fyodorovna
Recommendations
- 88
Charlotte Observer
Picks up steam from the ominous opening scene and ends as a quietly suspenseful thriller. - 88
New York Post
The movie that deserved to win the Oscar for foreign-language film, and one of the best movies ever made about life behind the Iron Curtain. - 88
New York Daily News
Feels like an old-fashioned movie in the way it deals with bold sacrifices made in the name of love, while its setting and chary view of the era's political machinations mark it as distinctly modern. - 80
The New York Times
Wargnier's sumptuous, moving new film, captures both the hope of the returning Russians and their brutal betrayal. - 75
Baltimore Sun
One of the unique virtues of the cinema is its ability to bring history to life with engrossing detail and gripping immediacy; East-West does this. - 70
TV Guide Magazine
It's Deneuve, in little more than a cameo, who commands your attention and doesn't release you until she's good and ready. - 60
Village Voice
Wargnier has assembled a stellar French and Russian cast, but all that talent can't overcome his heavy-handed screenplay. - 50
San Francisco Chronicle
It is well-made in an old-fashioned way, and its straight-arrow lack of cynicism may be old- fashioned as well.
