Evening Standard from London, Greater London, England • 18

ALEXANDER WALKER on an unexpected film from the East and a rather more predictable one from the West Russian Graffiti YOU know the scene don't you you know the characters? A Hollywood screenwriter certainly would The year's 1958 Three girls are sharing a dorm Cracking textbooks holding down odd-Jobs for Scket money fussing over elr make-up wisecracking' day-dreaming scheming to catch their man The carts might have been Bade for Sissy Spacek Jaime lee Curtis Cindy Williams The trio spring a' tender trap for available and willing males by holding a dinner party In an uncle's apartment The boys show up affairs follow-Hwith a big-league hockey player a TV technician and the shy guy who lives in the country Would you buy Paul Le Mat Bo Hopkins Dennis Christopher Boon ou heroines are up to their plucked eyebrows in plot the goodtime girl marries her sports ace the serious one settles down to raise chickens their roommate is made pregnant by the kid from TV who refuses to uo the decent thing By the fade-out unmarried mum and child are putting forth the early shoots of women's Lib Fade in 20 years later and show what's happened to the 1950s and where their kids are now at But wait a moment where exactly is this soap-opera churning out its predictable entanglements? The film's title supplies the answer and the answer Indicates a lot of the film's- curiosity value MOSCOW DISTRUSTS TEARS (Cert 148 minutes Cineeenta) is an authentic HXaAaJnJtiiaaia mnnrta hut ax un-Russian in' its ingredients as any oi uie pap paaamg an -the afternoon hours American housewives spend watching TV Vladimir Menshovts film could be and would sound better if it Russian Graffiti For It takes all the stereotypes of American youth culture and turns them into their nearest Soviet look-alikes Not a bit surprising (to me) that it won this year's Oscar for the Best Foreign Film (though It shames me to think that Hollywood preferred it to Kurosawa's feudal epic Kage-musha) For if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery Moscow Distrusts Tears laid it on and got its reward I must be wary of finding more sinister explanations For the film is pleasant enough in its old-fashioned way to serve as approved -escapism for Russia own starved fUmgoers And I certainly dcrt allege it was made to prove to the West that they don't eat their babies in Moscow When you remember the movies that the Russians wont let out of the country and the dissident film-makers who are removed from having official existence Inside their country then Moscow Distrusts Tears seems to be making propaganda by the soft touch It owns up to Imperfections in the Socialist society that to hint at would once have merited a gulag vacation: unwanted pregnancies menfolk taking to the bottle kids cheeking their parents ahead of their prudish elders on sex even listening in to pop on stereo headsets But it doesn't sound so much like confessional admissions as sentimental camouflage covering up grosser Inhumanities in I dont think truth is served or even peace preserved by looking at the enemy and saying "Why they're no different from us" Russia's-disst dent artists have paid the price of exile imprisonment and even execution by telling us how great and terrible difference -is It's and for some It will be to yield to this film's evident charm But it shouldn't be mistaken for the truth "Distrust" Is something to be applied to more than Moscow's tears These are officially licensed Krokodil tears EAST: Vera Alentova as unmarried mum WEST Bo Derek as persistent virgin 5oAXisagreatwcytoskintruTcrKJsoneasy game to learn When you join youl be able to take advantage of personal tuition excellent courts and oB yourequip-rrmri at vmrv erxnoetitivA orices Jungle rot a last week In order to hype Bo Derek's new movie I was sent a phallic balloon a' mmble-minded reader suggested it should be called a Bo-loon a bag of peanuts an invitation to sip Champagne with Bo and her husband John Derek beside the Zoo's monkey house and a notification that the Press screening of TABZAN THE APE MAN roert AA: Selected cinemas) was being held three hours too late to catch this column's printing deadline Earlier this week I finally got to the movie no I didn't wy to make the Champagne reception: I left thattomy am oundhat indeed the movie Is Bo's show But it Is no "10" of the tree-tops From start to finish it Is a piece of jungle rot An excuse In addition to our playhg foatittes youl f7rrl wfl stodced bar w'rth food and a friendVoJmosphereAndavorietyofsocid events which wis keep you on me dob even whan vou'raoff court Sn vou'rs into lauash with a difference doo for Bo to get back la the water or cavort In the not-quite altogether for an amphibian affair with the current Keeper of the Loin Cloth a mute beauty played by muscle-builder Miles CKeefe whom Bo's Jane tells a bit ambiguously "You're more beautiful than any girl I know" Soon she's musing "We're both virgins It's a strange problem" It'll come as a disappointment to adult filmgoers expecting the action necessary to resolve the problem that they both apparentt stay that way But then you cant have an AA Certificate and explicit sex too Why though cant you at least have some spectacle for the children Apart from wresting Bo from a boa and uttering his patent bull-elephant bellow Tarzan doesn't actually do much except keep an eye open for Bo's bellicose Papa XRichiard Harris) Even so you wonder If anyone with Bo's teeny voice breathily uttering her lines with an ineptness perhaps intended to pass for adolescent Immaturity Is really and truly obsession-worthy She's certainly proof against her director -cum -photographer husband John Derek's attempt to bestir her bespoke body Into something remotely approaching a performance The orang-outang wrestling playfuUy with Bo at the end Is abetter bet for an Oscar But then to a chimp who's twice co-starretd with Clint Eastwood Bo Derek must have been a push-over Itgoltobe the Ring In and have a look robnd But ad now as there Eed membership ooikjbJe South Kensington Squash Club West Surrey Squash Club Tel: Wafen-onbames 29699 Mid Surrey Squash Club New Croydon Squash Club North London Sauash Club Summer sting The Broadway MmwelHH N10U 01-444 8212 North Middlesex Squash Club advantage of her Win Jacques discover it's Pierre And is laying another man's daughter a less pardonable offence against friendship than laying his wife? It's a short-story film that would profit from being even shorter But the irony coats its sting with a Utter poison you dorft quite expect from its understated comedy AT THE end of Dennis' Hopper's OUT OF THE BLUE (Cert 94 mini: Gate) Mother (Sharon Farrell) Is shooting herself up with drugs in the bathroom Dad (Dennis Hopper) on a four-letter word kick of his own is drinking himself Insensible in the kitchen punk daughter (Linda Manz) is turning herself into a dyke In the bedroom and preparing to mutilate herself with the household scissors This un- GEOFF BOYCOTT WILL SIGN YOUR COPY JACQUES (Victor Lanoux) la a dad with a double chin With a teenage daughter vacaUoDdng with him and his buddy Pierre (Jean-Pierre Marielfe) the ladykuling look In his eye is a battery that's running low Both men are slumping comfortably into middle-age wondering if life has more to offer than a tonkss bikini" but not unduly disturbed if it hasnt so long as the supper table always offers a good blow-out Claude Bent's script and direction set up A SUMMER AFFAIB (Cert AA: 84 mlns: Minema Knirhtsbrldge) leisurely and with a commendable refusal to give his lumpish -life-like heroes any of the glamour that summer bachelors spray on with the tanning oU Unfortunately for Pierre one of them is present and insistent Jacques daughter whose virginity is lost to Pierre after one midnight dip Remorse overwhelms him then something worse For the proud girl tells her Dad only that "an older man" took Geoff Boycott will be signing copies of his book i aa-a of the England West Indies Tour IN THE FAST LANE (Arthur Barker "SssbbI in our hookshoo tomorrow SDeakabie unbearable and virtually unreviewable movie Fri 2nd Oct between 1 pm and 2 is described as "a young girl's premature awakening into the try ana ucomprenensiue 56 Old Broad Street London: EC2M 1 RX Telephone: 01-588 1 632 aoSt woria- ra Quarrel aoout.