Director Andrey Smirnov
Starring Anton Rival, Evguenya Obraztsova, Evgeniy Tkachuk
Score 5/6
In 1957 French student Pierre Durand comes to Moscow to do an internship at Moscow State University. Here he meets ballerina Kira Galkina and photographer Valera Uspenskiy. With them he discovers the cultural side of Moscow – not just the traditional one, but the underground one as well. During his year in Russia’s capital Pierre lives an entirely different life than what he’s used to. But the internship and the experience of the Soviet people’s way of life are not the only things Pierre is after. He’s searching for his father, White officer Tatishchev, who was arrested in the 1930s.
Okay, now for the last movie from the Russian Film Festival that I got to watch A Frenchman. I got the chance to have interview questions put to one of its stars Evgenia Obraztsova so I’m sure that more then a few of you out there saw this review coming.
A Frenchman probably wasn’t my favourite movie of the festival, but considering that it is a black and white movie and it has been a couple of years since I last watched a black and white movie and I loved how Moscow looked filmed in black and white. I think. A small suggestion to filmmakers who might be presenting a black and white in the future with subtitles. White is a distracting colour choice for subtitles in a black and white movie.
If your looking for a fast-paced movie this certainly is not for you. I enjoyed the opening scene I thought it was amusing in a first-year university student sort of way. It was interesting to see how the student life was portrayed in A Frenchman seemed like what might have been portrayed of students in the west. Though I can see there might be some differences in the musical tastes of Russian students. I enjoyed Anton Rival’s onscreen presence and I hope that I get the chance to track down more of Evguenya Obraztsova’s work. The image of her at the end of the movie certainly was an impactful way to end the movie this was highlighted further by the lack of music during the credits.
