Critic Rating
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Director
Régis Wargnier
Cast
Catherine Deneuve,
Sandrine Bonnaire,
Oleg Menshikov,
Sergei Bodrov Jr.,
Tatyana Dogileva,
Bogdan Stupka
Genre
Drama,
Romance
In 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 are sent to Kiev. She wants to return to France immediately; however, he knows that they are captives and must watch every step.
New York Daily News by Jami Bernard
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.
New York Post by Jonathan Foreman
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.
Charlotte Observer by Lawrence Toppman
Picks up steam from the ominous opening scene and ends as a quietly suspenseful thriller.
San Francisco Examiner by G. Allen Johnson
A grand, old-fashioned movie of spies and Communist repression.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer by William Arnold
Has the sensibility of a Hollywood "woman's picture" of the '40s -- the weepie saga of a married woman trapped in an untenable situation.
The New York Times by Dana Stevens
Wargnier's sumptuous, moving new film, captures both the hope of the returning Russians and their brutal betrayal.
Los Angeles Times by Kevin Thomas
Takes the most somber of predicaments, and makes it involving, romantic and ultimately intensely suspenseful.
Baltimore Sun by Ann Hornaday
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.
Portland Oregonian by Diana Abu-Jaber
With its fiery tone and fierce intensity, East-West offers a profile of a country suspended in fear as well as of one woman's indomitable passion for freedom.
Chicago Tribune by Michael Wilmington
Has great themes and great actors.
TV Guide Magazine by Stephen Miller
It's Deneuve, in little more than a cameo, who commands your attention and doesn't release you until she's good and ready.
Village Voice by Leslie Camhi
Wargnier has assembled a stellar French and Russian cast, but all that talent can't overcome his heavy-handed screenplay.
Austin Chronicle by Marjorie Baumgarten
Although it's interesting and well-performed, East-West never locates its crux: It's all over the map.
San Francisco Chronicle by Bob Graham
It is well-made in an old-fashioned way, and its straight-arrow lack of cynicism may be old- fashioned as well.
Rolling Stone by Peter Travers
Director Regis Warginer ("Indochine") lets his film degenerate into a turgid melodrama.
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