Dorathen Better Late Then Never

Spoonatects Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Cristal The movie really just wants to entertain people.

laurel14 This unflinching look at the former Soviet Union just after WWII should be seen by all those who might still harbor some romantic feelings for the communist past. There is an almost Orwellian atmosphere to the film, which is supposedly a true story of a group of Russsian émigrés living in France who are invited to return to the USSR to help rebuild the war torn country. As soon as these ostensibly Russian patriots disembark on Soviet soil they are hurled into the madhouse world of Stalinist Russia. The similarity to the Nazis as families are separated, manhandled and killed is obvious and terrifying. The rest of the movie is concerned with the survivors' attempt at escape. The acting is first rate and the mise en scene on the button. This a truly harrowing and credible film, all the more so for being a French production. See it and tell some of your far leftist friends to see it as well.

Winterble Others have commented on the "reality" of Soviet/Ukrainian life in the 1950s; since I wasn't there, I can't tell. But the initial hurdle for me was to accept that the wife, Marie, somehow first agreed to emigrate with her Russian-born husband and their son, and then once there suddenly coming across as "let me out of here!" I realize couples in love can make stupendously erratic decisions, but this one was rather major -- leaving France, which certainly was in the throes of its own economic and infrastructure collapse after World War II, to the Soviet Union, which was several times worse off. I can see Alexei buying into it through some kind of patriotic altruism, but I can't imagine why Marie would have done so. There isn't, as far as I know, any history of large numbers of French -- Communist or otherwise -- voluntarily moving to the USSR following the war (or anytime, for that matter). They're just too savvy -- they would have said, "Hell, if it's this bad in France in 1946, it's got to be utterly wretched in the Soviet Union. Je ne vais point!" Or words to that effect.Nonetheless, a great movie to watch if only for the actors, the idea of what living in Kiev might have been like in that period, and even the little sad shots of Sofia towards the end.

ira-k The exposition gives us a very clear, cold-war frame, then goes on slowing its way thru the story - a clear failure of either the screenplay or the directing. In the end, unfortunately, wasted energy of brilliant actors Catherine Deneuve and Oleg Menshikov.

lingmeister East/West bears light on the tragic outcome that happened to many emigres returning to Soviet Union in their help to rebuild it after the war. But at the same time, it just seemed that the husband/wife in this movie never had anything really solid in the first place for them to lose once they got there. I never really felt their gradual separation or the husband's shift from leaving the Soviets ASAP to building a life there.All in all, the movie still brings to light one of the dark period of Soviet history through the perspective of someone experiencing it.