Old-fashioned women's picture, true in spirit to the period in which it is set, centered around the dutiful French wife of a Russian émigré who accepts Stalin's limited-time offer of repatriation, post-WWII. Once the couple (plus their small son, for whom the movie has little time) are securely behind the Iron Curtain, the Soviet welcoming committee is free to show its true shade of red: "Ninety percent of returning Russians are imperialist spies" -- and are accordingly shot dead on the spot or shipped off to the gulag. The heroine is spared only because her husband, a medical man, merits special consideration: one dismal room in a communal apartment in Kiev. (A telling detail: the toilet seat hung outside the bathroom door when not in use.) The wife immediately begins making plans to return to France -- "They can't force us to stay" -- and is still making them eight years later, after Stalin's death, not to mention after her husband has moved in with a neighbor woman and after she herself has snuggled up with the sinewy young athlete on the national swimming team. ("That's all very French," remarks a hard-line Party member.) The anti-Communist film somehow seems no longer as sporting, as stimulating, as arousing, as in the days when it could invite charges ranging from fogyism to fascism. Even so, it can well enough serve the purposes of unambiguous melodrama, and it can make a nice change from the Nazi (or more fashionably, Arab terrorist) film: there is always a need for the dyed-in-the-wool bad guy. Here we are given the bonus of some sticky domestic difficulties (whose side is the husband really on?), and the larger bonus of one of the world's supreme actresses, Sandrine Bonnaire. With Oleg Menchikov, Serguei Bodrov, Jr., and Catherine Deneuve; directed by Regis Wargnier. (1999) — Duncan Shepherd