If this wasn’t based on real events as depicted in Sergey Fetisov’s memoir, I’d be bemoaning the soap opera-esque plotting here and perhaps be less generous with my rating. However, taken as the biographical truth, this romantic story began in 1977 in an Air Force base in Soviet occupied Estonia between Tom Prior’s Sergey, a soulful young private 2 weeks away from returning to civilian life after his mandatory training and Oleg Zagorodnii’s Roman, a handsome lieutenant who loves to fly but also shares Sergey’s love for photography and introduces the younger man to ballet. Societal pressure and the KGB are the main obstacles in their increasingly intimate relationship as they are forced to make choices between love and career, in a film that crosses An Officer and A Gentleman with Brokeback Mountain, by way of dialogue and plotting lifted out of Hollyoaks. Nicely put together by director Peeter Rebane, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Prior, he has made good use of location shots which add authenticity while small flourishes and subtle hints like who’s in focus in a photograph and who isn’t, come close to giving it nuance and certainly provide the film with an extra layer of sheen. The result is a pretty film with pretty model-like leads who look sexy both in and out of uniforms. Made in Russian-accented English and not the subtitled affair I was expecting it to be, it can sometimes verge close to those Meerkat ads and the acting from the supporting cast varies, but the central leads, and Diana Pozharskaya’s Luisa, look and act their parts well enough to save it from being too niche or too naff; while recent developments in Russia give it an extra sense of relevancy and poignancy.
@SubtitledFriend 