East-West:  drama.  Starring Sandrine Bonnaire, Oleg Menshikov, Catherine Deneuve, Sergei Bodrov Jr., Ruben Tupiero, Erwan Baynaud, Grigori Manukov, Tatyana Dogileva, Bogdan Stupka, Meglena Karalambova, Atanass Atanassov, and Tania Massalitinova.  Screenplay by Sergei Bodrov, Louis Gardel, Rustam Ibragimbekov, and Régis Wargnier.. Directed by Régis Wargnier.  PG-13.  Run time: 120 minutes. In French and Russian with English subtitles. Now playing at the Clay Theater.

The lure of the motherland is an inscrutable force and, as played out in East-West, a siren song that tears apart the lives of all who hear its beguiling promise of repatriation. So begins this drama of the particular brutality of post-World War II Stalinist Russia.  The war ended, a group of expatriates are returning to the Soviet Union, the country of their birth, after a lengthy time away in France.  Among them, the Russian-born Doctor Alexei Golovin, subtly played by Oleg Menshikov, and his French wife Marie, the luminous Sondrine Bonnaire. They have brought their young son in hopes of making a new home for themselves in the Soviet Union.

With only a brief set-up in narration, the film swiftly jumps from the atmosphere of sentimental anticipation aboard ship as the immigrants journey back to their homeland, directly into decimated hopes once they are met by the KGB while disembarking in Odessa. From then on, East-West descends into the colorless hyper-reality of Soviet Russia, as the passengers are brutalized by their KGB captors and sent to work camps or precipitously killed.  Because Marie Golovin is French, Russian Intelligence assumes she is an imperialist spy – the standard assumption made of all expats returning to their homeland, especially their foreign spouses.  The KGB summarily destroys her French passport in a pivotal scene. She is then interrogated interminably, physically beaten, and emotionally battered, but with no admission of guilt forthcoming, she is surrendered into the custody of her husband, Alexei Golovin. Because he is a doctor in good standing with the Communist party, his family is spared for the moment and sent to a crowded rooming house in Kiev.  

The story unfolds at a fairly rapid pace without too much time spent on the details: the family settles into Soviet life uneasily and with little choice except to do so. Doctor Golovin works at the red flag factory, attempting to improve the work conditions of the patients he sees there, the many women who work the sewing machines and are forced to breathe the dust-laden air. Marie takes on a job ironing the uniforms of the Communist military choir, all the while learning the Russian language and barely containing her vehement hopes of returning to France. 

In that it spans more than a decade of difficult circumstances, the film has the arduous task of negotiating lengthy time transitions while still maintaining the integrity of the characters and the rhythm of the narration.  Details are neglected in favor of more salient turns in plot such as Alexei Golovin taking a lover and Marie befriending the young man, Sascha, whose grandmother has just been denounced for speaking to Marie in French.  Marie’s friendship turns to love for this young man as he struggles to escape and head back to France, in hopes of getting word to Marie’s family as well as the French Embassy. 

Where the film shines are in these dalliances with plot details: Marie’s burgeoning interest in Sascha’s swimming career on the State swim team, Sascha’s struggle to stay afloat once his babushka (grandmother) is denounced.  But East-West overlooks valuable explorations of character in an effort perhaps to advance the story and get where it has to go. Marie and Alexei’s relationship is not fully charted: it’s unclear why he takes a lover when only a few scenes earlier he has professed his undying love for his wife. It’s also not apparent how Alexei plans to help his wife as she struggles to free herself and her son from the confines of Communism and return to France.  He does promise her that he will not forsake her in her struggle to return home, but that it will take time for him to secure a way out.  Catherine Deneuve, in an understated but pivotal role as a famous French actress visiting Russia, serves as the catalyst for Marie’s realized hopes of escape.  She promises to take a letter to Marie’s family in France and somehow help her flee her Communist captors.

Despite its shortcomings with temporal transitions (scenes are often followed by a span of several months to 10 years) East-West manages to maintain a level of emotion and suspense that succeeds in drawing the viewer in.  This is highly charged material: the struggle of a husband and a wife to stay connected amid the chaos and paranoia of Stalinist propaganda.  The film chooses to focus more on Marie’s point of reference rather than concentrating on Alexei’s more cryptic motivations.  To focus more on Alexei, the viewer might have been more keyed into his struggle with returning to his homeland, the terrible disappointment he must have felt at the abysmal state of things in Soviet Russia and the certain knowledge and guilt he suffered that his family was trapped there.  But to the film’s credit, by staying more connected to Marie’s perspective, the viewer is unprepared for the surprise outcome that awaits at the film’s end. Bonnaire’s Marie is resilient and complex, her acting layered as she struggles to accept her husband again and again after his many betrayals of heart and conscience.  East-West prevails in keeping this moving story alive.