With stars of the screen, it is often only the Edgar Morin-like myth that remains; but viewed close up, an actress’s lifetime has more to do with destiny, and in Marina Vlady’s case, that destiny is unclassifiable, with over eighty classic films and more that were never released. It is across France, Italy, and chiefly Russia that this documentary, chock-full of rare archive material, takes us as it traces the journey of a free woman, making this not simply a documentary but a political film. Marina Vlady was resolute in taking charge of her own destiny, whatever the cost. Thus, when in the summer of 1967 she met Russia’s greatest poet and singer, Vladimir Vysotsky, she did not hesitate to set aside her Paris life – and her career as a rising star – to follow her passion and live and breathe the reality of daily life in the Soviet Union as it then was. Their love affair lasted 12 years, 12 years in which she came up against administrative red tape, the problem of widespread shortages, the KGB and above all the deprivation of freedom, both hers and especially Vysotsky’s; reflecting that bipolar world that swayed between friction and detente, where Khrushchev, De Gaulle, Nixon and Brezhnev, among others, played out their parts on the global chessboard. Marina Vlady described this starshaped Soviet journey in numerous publications, but this is the first time it has been documented on film.

Bruno Deloye