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Concept
East/West
Summary
East/West (Est-Ouest; Vostok-Zapad) is a 1999 drama film directed by Régis Wargnier, starring Sandrine Bonnaire, Oleg Menshikov, Catherine Deneuve and Sergei Bodrov Jr. It received generally positive reviews from critics.
In 1946, Stalin calls all White Russian émigrés who fled to the West after the Bolshevik Russian Revolution of 1917, back to the USSR in order to help rebuild the devastated motherland in the aftermath of the Second World War and offers them citizenship. Among a group of French émigrés is the doctor Alexei Golovin (Menshikov), who believes in Stalin's promises of a peaceful new beginning, his French wife Marie (Bonnaire), and their young son Serjoscha. The atmosphere on the ship taking them to Russia is jovial, with drinking and singing. But as soon as they dock in Odessa, it is clear that Stalin was using his promises as an excuse to murder the exiles or have them put in Gulags. Once ashore, the Soviet authorities separate them into two groups, 'fit' and 'unfit'. A young man is shot trying to run back to his father from whom he is separated, and the Golovins begin to understand the situation they have landed in.
On arrival Marie is branded a spy by a Soviet official, and her French passport is torn up. The family moves into a cramped apartment in a communal house in Kyiv and Alexei accepts a job overseeing workers' health in a factory. Marie briefly befriends the elderly housekeeper — who speaks some French—but this lady is quickly 'denounced', taken away, and ends up dead. Her grandson Sasha (Bodrov) is left without a home when a couple arrive and claim his grandmother's room. Marie invites him to live in the Golovin's room.
Marie feels stifled and repressed and wants to go back to France. She attempts to go to the Soviet authorities and ask to be sent back, but she is stopped by Alexei. Public non-compliance, he knows, could get them all killed. She also approaches a visiting French actress, Gabrielle (Deneuve), and attempts to gain her help in escaping the USSR.
Official source
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