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From 1945 to 1990, the Red Army's headquarters and biggest westward garrison in Legnica, Poland, was a Russian enclave closed to outsiders, including Poles. Soviet soldiers and civilians comprised almost half the population of the town, which accounted for its nickname, Mala Moskwa -- "Little Moscow."
- Starring: Svetlana Khodchenkova.
- Rating: R in nature for sexual themes.
Writer-director Waldemar Krzystek's powerfully evocative romantic drama -- based on actual events -- is set at the precise midpoint of that Cold War period, in its most restive years 1967-68. A young Russian pilot and astronaut-wannabe named Jura (Dmitry Ulyanov) arrives in Legnica with his stunningly beautiful wife, Vera (Svetlana Khodchenkova), both of them happy and hopeful.
Soon enough, at a local "Polish-Soviet Friendship Song Contest," the Poles in the audience are surprised and delighted to hear Vera croon a steamy torch song in their own language, which she learned and loved as a girl, listening to Polish music on the radio.
Nobody is more delighted than Polish officer-musician Michal (Leslaw Zurek), whose advances are bold from the start. Less delighted are the chauvinistic Soviets, with their built-in Russian contempt for Poles. Serious tensions exist between those theoretical comrades. There's a strict no-fraternization rule and a familiar, age-old issue: One side's "liberators" is the other side's "occupation force."
Russian contempt extends heartily to the Czechs. "You just stamp your foot and they put their arms up!" says one Soviet officer. The Poles are considered much more dangerously rebellious than the Czechs. This time, in the impending 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion, those stereotypes would be reversed. But the Russians don't yet know that, and Poland's deep (and deeply suppressed) Catholicism has them constantly on edge.
As the upright wife of a respected officer, Vera is fully aware of her position -- proud to the point of haughty. She fights desperately against falling in love with Michal and -- when that fails -- fights just as desperately to conceal it. But, as a Soviet political officer dryly observes, "Wherever there are people, they need to be watched."
"Little Moscow" flashes back and forward over 30 years to include a subplot framing device of Jura and Vera's look-alike daughter returning to visit her uneasy grave. It's rather labored and intrusive. And I think we've had enough heroine-cabaret singers who provide their own final-credits soundtrack. Speaking of music, there's precious little from Michal, just a little tickling of the ivories now and then (to tickle Vera).
But Krzystek's exquisite images are unassailable, from the rise of a horizontal curtain (hangar doors opening up to reveal an emerging airplane) to the erotic exchange of lovers' touches and their tragically beautiful kiss with a baptized godchild in between them. Khodchenkova's performance is as stunning as her face, with its Audrey Hepburn-like profile. Zurek, with his startling blue eyes, is perfectly brash and passionate.
Andrjej Wajda's recent "Katyn" was a sweeping -- but deliberately cold -- historical account of Poland's World War II wounds that time can never heal. Krzystek handles his similar theme of Russian occupation in a more poetic (and more tearfully emotional) way. "She is quicker to believe in disaster than in happiness," says one of Vera's Russian inquisitors. "Ah, the Slavic soul," patronizes another. "We are all Slavs here," replies the first, " -- and almost brothers."
Almost, but not quite. "Little Moscow" is part history, part tragedy, part soap opera. Lenin looms and love is doomed in the time of war -- hot and cold alike.
"Little Moscow," in Polish and Russian with English subtitles, will be screened 7:30 tonight and 7 p.m. tomorrow at Regent Square Theater at the Three Rivers Film Festival in collaboration with the Polish Cultural Council. Director Waldemar Krzystek will not appear either night as scheduled because of a death in his family. There will be a reception after tonight's show.
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