Publicity allows everyone to openly express discontent, but the shoe did not add. This very interesting spy melodrama of the little-known Australian director Fred Skepisi, who already worked at that time in Hollywood, I came across when I saw the defiant name “Russian Department” in the filmography of the famous American actress Michelle Pfeiffer. The name immediately prompted interest to quickly look at what cranberries there once again rented about our country, and even back in 1990, when the USSR lived out its last year, rapidly falling apart. And what a pleasant surprise, a balm to the soul, was actually the complete absence of the notorious “flung Hollywood cranberries” in the “Russian Department”, which looked great even as a truly Russian film! But, unfortunately, the tape remained in the shadows, not actually noticed by critics either in the United States or in the then-existing USSR. Many American critics at the time of the release of the film considered it as no longer corresponding to the era of perestroika and glasnost. And, nevertheless, the Russian Department claimed the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, and Michelle Pfeiffer was nominated for a Golden Globe for the beautifully played role of Katya Orlova.
Katya Orlova (Michel Pfeiffer) is a charming Russian girl, literary editor. Trying to ferry a manuscript of a famous Soviet scientist to a British publisher from the Russian department of Barley Blair (Sean Connery), Katya and Bartholomew Scott Blair will be unwittingly drawn into the whirlpool of international espionage. The manuscript, the content of which is sufficient to disturb the world balance, was intercepted by Western intelligence. Blair, formerly associated with the Russian branch of British intelligence, is recruited into the Soviet Union to obtain new information about the mysterious manuscript. But when Blair meets Katya, he must choose between his mission and his love for a Russian woman, for whom loyalty to her own country is as unshakable as for Blair himself. Heroes try to survive between two fires and run for their happiness.
Not for nothing Barley Blair played the “former James Bond” Sean Connery, who in the “Russian Department”, being on a mission, found time for a dizzying love affair with a beautiful girl. However, the image of Blair, of course, will be calmer than James Bond – there are absolutely no shootings and he does not drink his signature cocktail of vodka-martini. The American Michelle Pfeiffer so reliably conveyed the image of a modest Soviet girl that she could not be distinguished from our compatriot, like Katya Orlova, except that she gave a little accent when she began to speak Russian. The film takes place in London, Montreal, Lisbon, Moscow and Leningrad (St. Petersburg). All scenes shot in the former USSR, namely in Moscow, in Leningrad, deserve special attention. They were shot from all angles so reliably and with increased attention to small details that at these moments you begin to perceive the film as our good Soviet, how accurately the atmosphere of the USSR of perestroika 1990 was conveyed.
As a native of St. Petersburg, I could not take an eye off the business walk of Barley Blair and Dante (Klaus Maria Brandauer) along the Palace Square, the Field of Mars, the Summer Garden, the Peter and Paul Fortress, the Bank Bridge, and many other famous places of the city. Shootings of each city, especially Moscow, as well as the then Leningrad, were amazing, they were captured on film as successfully as even in our domestic films they were not shown everywhere, let alone foreign ones. It was no less interesting to watch how the heroine Michelle Pfeiffer stands in line for shoes in the Moscow GUM, meets with the hero Sean Connery in one of the stunningly beautiful stations of the Moscow metro - "Kievskaya", and romantically parting, hurrying to the trolley bus.
This film, as one of the undeservedly overlooked, is undoubtedly slow, even somewhat boring, like any political detective, and does not look easy, containing a lot of complex specific information of a political nature, which not everyone is able to “digest”, as well as an abundance of leisurely conversations of the film’s heroes about the fate of Russia. But the Russian Department is worth watching. His leisurely two-hour narrative, devoid of any drive and action, radiates something warm, kind and native, especially scenes shot in the former USSR. And the kind romantic duo Connery-Pfeiffer, bringing their warmth to this tape, looks great and demonstrates brilliant play and complete immersion in their roles. The film, rather, will appeal to the more mature generation, who know firsthand what the Soviet Union and perestroika are, and will turn out to be a pleasant find, because our country of that period is shown there, indeed, politically correct, with dignity, with maximum respect and love.
7 out of 10