Film

...This is the best motion-picture treatment of that milieu since Godard's One or Two Things I Know About Her...

...The film's conclusion owes a debt to Truffaut's The Four Hundred Blows, but while Truffaut's An-toine finds momentary liberation in his wild escape to the sea, Majid, the protagonist of Ted's young French-Algerian filmmaker, just finds himself collared by the police...

...It tells a story that focuses on the doleful daily lives and dreams of two working-class women, Teresa (Margi Clarke) and Elaine (Alexandra Pigg...

...In its content, production, and achievement, this is an exemplary case of imaginative Third World filmmaking...

...Nice acting, effective direction by Isabelle's sister, Caroline, in her first venture in film-but the whole thing doesn't add up to much...

...The film raises inevitable questions...

...Quilombo Mythical saga of an independent democratic republic of escaped slaves in the highlands of Brazil in the Seventeenth Century...

...Teresa works in a chicken factory, removing the innards, bagging them, and stuffing them back...

...The young women get together with the Russians...

...Letter to Brezhnev has no intention of idealizing the Soviet Union—although Peter's hometown on the Black Sea sounds more genial than what we see of Elaine's Liverpool—but seeks to bring home the point that without work or other prospects, Elaine indeed gives up nothing by opting for adventure and life with the man she loves, even if this does mean going to Russia...

...Elaine can't find any kind of work, must live with her parents, and survives as best she can on welfare...

...Elaine's future, in the movie, is problematic and by no means assured...

...So she decides to write a letter to Brezhnev, explaining her situation, and asking for help...

...She replies, "I don't have anything to give up," and is last seen at the airport, preparing to make the leap into an uncertain future...

...Is there any reason to assume Elaine will live a more satisfying life in the Soviet Union...

...The British Foreign Office is unresponsive to her pleas for help...

...The Foreign Office representative has shown her a photo of Peter with a woman said to be his wife...

...Teresa and Sergei roll in the hay while Elaine and Peter engage in conversation, exploration, and mutual discovery...

...Except for Teresa, just about everyone opposes Elaine's desire to live with Peter in the Soviet Union...

...This may be a reality, or it may be a last-ditch fabrication of British officials unwilling to provide the Soviets with a minor propaganda coup...

...Her gaze fixes on Peter (Peter Firth), who stares back...

...Faced with the grim monotony of Liverpudlian realities, Elaine becomes a terror at home, and is finally persuaded by Teresa to apply for emigration to the Soviet Union...

...Elaine confesses a very special feeling for Peter, and Teresa expresses a yen for his bearish (but non-English-speaking) pal Sergei...

...Letter to Brezhnev is the work of underemployed and unemployed young people from Liverpool...

...In the morning, just before his ship is to leave, Peter tells Elaine that he loves her and wants to marry her...

...one feels that something extraordinary has happened...

...One such work, relatively free of commercial calculation and endowed with unusual authenticity, is Letter to Brezhnev, a captivating love story set within the context of gritty, class-conscious realism...

...One night at a club, Elaine's eyes light on a couple of Russian sailors seated at the bar, enjoying a one-night shore leave...

...For whatever reasons, the Communist Party chairman replies affirmatively, and she is sent a plane ticket...

...Written and directed by Carlos Diegues (Ganga Zumba, Xica, Bye Bye Brazil), one of the founders of the Brazilian Cinema Novo of the 1960s...

...Mostly, they find clammy-handed mashers on the make or unemployed and undependable young spongers...

...The most vital, least predictable, and most interesting movies released in recent months have been low-budget independent productions made by fledgling filmmakers...

...Signe Charlotte So-so psychological romance-thriller from France, in which an alluring but immature and unpredictable female on the run (Is-abelle Huppert) reenters the life of her former lover (Niels Arestrup), who can't resist falling in love with her anew...

...On weekend evenings they cruise the clubs of Liverpool, looking for a little fun and hoping for romance or adventure...

...It's a bit like that here, too," she replies...

...M Hits and Misses Tea in the Harem Difficulties and cultural conflicts suffered by an adolescent Arab immigrant living in the high-rise modern suburbs of Paris...

...Isn't her story presented in naively romantic terms...

...The couples eventually spend the night in port-side hotel rooms (the girls pay, with some hesitancy, admitting that this is a sign of their desperation...

...This exchange does not suggest a Soviet Utopia...

...In a wonderfully convincing scene, we hear Teresa and Elaine in a bathroom stall, comparing notes on the males with whom they've paired...

...When he learns, early on, that Elaine is unemployed, Peter says, "In the Soviet Union if you don't work you don't eat...

...Although this exchange of rapt looks is a motion-picture cliche, the film manages to invest the extended moment with real magic...

...it does convey the frustration and hopelessness experienced by members of the British working class...

...The whole business is quite beyond the ken of her parents, who have a Cold War view of the Russians, as does the unctuous Foreign Office representative who suggests that by emigrating Elaine will have to give up "everything...

...This stirring and often moving work achieves unusual effects by treating historical material as currently relevant myth...