The International Culture and Art Center hosted the premiere of the film East-West. There is every reason to refer to the event as a significant one, even an unprecedented one. At long last the Oscar-winning director of Indochine and author of The French Woman, deigned to visit Kyiv. And he was not alone but with the real and still very much in demand star of the twentieth century, the unreachable, beautiful, and aloof Catherine Deneuve. To those present she demonstrated true French class. Although her role during the presentation of the motion picture — as, actually, was her part in the movie — was rather decorative, the audience was happy. She and RОgis Wargnier, who won the audience’s hearts with his friendly straightforwardness, embracing Bohdan Stupka and delivering a speech in Ukrainian, as well as with his assertion that he would have never made the film without Channel 1+1’s aid and that of his other Ukrainian friends. And this was by no means a mere tribute to the politeness of Oleksandr Rodniansky who represented and received the French guests in Kyiv. He is co-producer of the film and 1+1 took an active part in the production, jointly with the French company UGC-UM and Russia’s NTV-Profit (represented by Igor Tolstunov at the premiere).
A considerable number of the scenes were filmed in Kyiv, particularly within the walls of the former October Palace. In general, our city can hardly be recognized on the screen, yet fully corresponds to the stylistics of the film, the time (1946-49), and the tone of this tragic love story. Minister of Culture Bohdan Stupka made a cameo appearance. But he did it brilliantly, precisely, and expressively. In one of the mob scenes, together with Bohdan Stupka, one can see his wife and other recognizable faces. On the whole, a rare case: we emerged in the role unusual for us of both onlookers and, thanks to 1+1, direct participants in the European film-making process. And we do so not in some backwater in its very center. Suffice it to say that East-West was nominated for an Academy Award in the Best 1999 Foreign Film category. Although the statuette finally went to Pedro AlmodЧvar, in the first place, it was no sin for him to win, and secondly, being nominated for an Oscar is prestigious. (I will recall that for 1+1 this was a second such experience, rather pleasant: several years ago the film 1,001 Recipes of the Cook in Love starring Pierre Richard, with the television company as co-producer, was also nominated for an Academy Award). All this put together collected a full audience at the International Center; among those present were a host of well-known and familiar faces, such as: Viktor Yushchenko, Yuri Yekhanurov, Serhiy Tyhypko, Borys Tarasiuk, Zinovy Kulyk, Ivan Drach, stars of the big and small screens, and journalists.
As for the movie, it will perhaps find (and considering house’s reaction in places, it already has found) its audience — one that likes a coherent narrative, epic character, beautiful and picturesque imagery, albeit free from the burden of complex imagery and professionalism; in a word, a quality motion picture, an old-fashioned one in a sense. After all, here lies Wargnier’s shortcoming and simultaneously his advantage to which he has remained loyal in his every production. And something else. In his films this director recounts a melodramatic story not simply against the background of specific historical events, and these events become perhaps the main character, determining and often distorting the destinies of the personae, be it the fall of the colonial system in Indochina, Second World War (in The French Woman) or everyday Soviet totalitarianism, as in this case.
The East-West story begins in 1946 when the Russian ОmigrО husband (Oleg Menshikov), his French wife (Sandrine Bonnaire), and their little son come to the Soviet Union together with hundreds of our fellow countrymen naively trusting Stalin’s pardon. We all know only too well what was in the offing for all those people merrily walking down the gangway, stepping into a cold night: death, prison camps, exile, or a torturous long chain of compromises with the regime, something Menshikov’s hero seems to choose to preserve his family. They say that the Western viewer was so shocked by the heroes’ hopeless lot as they found themselves caught in the death trap called the USSR. At the same time, we that have in our time lived through the shocks of, say, The Hard Road or prison camp prose, can hardly be as shocked. And the heroine’s horror at seeing the dirty ramshackle communal flat where her family had to live from now on can be understood but can hardly be felt. I say this because, when attending the film, I somehow did not expect anything new from it. Yet there was an interest, although mixed with fear: how would we see our recent past portrayed by a French film director? Of course, any embroidering of the reality was out of the question. Wargnier is a master of different caliber, a subtle stylist and delicate artist.
Fortunately, my doubts proved groundless. His cinematic truth does not irritate and his sincere attempt to perceive what actually took place at the time deserves the best of respect (Screenplay: RОgis Wargnier, Louis Gardel, and two Russian script writers, Rustam Ibragimbekov and Sergei Bodrov). In addition, the film is based not on Stalinist horrors as such, but on a love triangle involving the characters played by Menshikov, Bonner, and Sergei Bodrov, Jr. And when the film was called anti-Soviet, one could not agree. Actually, it is much broader; it is about notions such as the free West and unfree East, about the fragility, if you will, of the line between the two. Evidence of this comes from the promising swimmer Sasha Vasiliev (Sergei Bodrov, Jr.) who fled West and dreamed of getting his sweetheart (Sandrine Bonnaire) out of the Soviet Union but encountered a Western democracy that was far from ideal, that same democracy we are placing such high hopes in, while remaining helpless, if not before the horrors, then horrors of our own state machine.
The film is also about love, and this is the main thing. It is about self-sacrifice for the sake of the one you truly love, a man’s sense of responsibility for his family, self-sacrifice for the sake of others, about sentiments that will always exist and which are the only way to resist the inexorable power of history.
And the heroes of East-West (I deliberately keep from you the details of the plot, so you can enjoy it in full) meet eventually, thirty years later. The text onscreen will tell you. Thus even we can have a happy ending, provided we do something to make it happen.
