AN ORDINARY EXECUTION

Pepe's View:

A film based on the last days of Stalin was difficult to pass up so it became another of our French Film Festival selections.
Marc Duigan directed this movie based on his own novel and managed to imbue the film with incredible tension. Anna, a young, beautiful and talented doctor who is happily married has a rumoured secret gift of healing using her hands. This makes her immensely popular with her patients and arouses  jealousy in her colleagues.
When Anna is summoned by Stalin himself and told to use her powers to ease his suffering because all his previous doctors had been thrown into prison, she is drawn into his world and we see some of his sinister thought processes.  Anna is played beautifully by Marina Hands and Stalin is played wonderfully by Andre Dussollier so that we actually feel some sense of empathy with him while recoiling from his ruthlessness and callousness.
Anna, at Stalin's "suggestion" as to how keep their healing sessions secret, agrees to leave her husband although she is not sure where she wil live.  Stalin using a peculiar logic tells Anna that he is unable to provide her with an apartment as that would be using his position to provide advantage for friends and so he would be corrupt.  He has an easier solution - have the husband arrested so Anna can continue to live in their appartment.
The tension  developed as Anna is continually summoned to Stalin's chambers knowing that at any time and for any reason she could herself be imprisoned or worse gives a wonderful snapshot of the fear, mistrust and evil of Stalin's regime.
This is a great movie which left me stunned.

My Score:  8.5/10

Ma's View:

Yes, at any moment you felt that Stalin could extinguish her life just as readily as he would crush a cockroach - the moment she could no longer relieve his pain would be her last.  Marina Hands captures perfectly the anguish of a loving wife forced to pretend to her husband that she is having an affair with a 'high official' in order to protect him, then hearing Stalin read aloud the report on his torture which revealed that indeed he knew nothing.  The atmosphere of tension and suspicion in the whole society is vividly depicted - in her workplace, she is threatened with reports and blackmailed for sexual favours; in her apartment building, neighbours threaten to report the noises of physical pleasure coming from her apartment as she and her husband try to conceive a child.  What an incredibly stressful life - no wonder she could not conceive.

A great movie, extremely well done.

My score: 9/10