movie review despite the falling snow

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Despite The Falling Snow review

Rebecca Ferguson stars in Despite The Falling Snow, and she's the best thing about the movie...

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The main draw of Despite The Falling Snow is a dual performance by Rebecca Ferguson, who shot this in between her Emmy-nominated work on The White Queen and her memorable breakthrough role in last year’s Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation . Adapted by writer-director Sharim Sharif from her own novel, this romantic thriller casts Ferguson as two women separated by time but connected by blood and a sequence of events that occurred in Moscow at the height of the Cold War.

In 1992, an American artist called Lauren (Ferguson) is curious as to why her weary uncle Sacha (Charles Dance) is so cagey about their family’s history and the circumstances of his defection from Russia thirty years prior. In particular, she’s beguiled by her aunt Katya (also Ferguson), of whom she is the spitting image.

As we learn from the film’s flashbacks to 1959, Katya is a staunch anti-Communist who is tasked with spying on Sacha, who was then a promising young government employee (and played by Sam Reid), for fellow spy Misha (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), but she finds herself falling for her mark. Lauren sets out for Moscow and with the help of political reporter Marina (Antje Traue), sets about trying to uncover what happened to her aunt.

If nothing else, Despite The Falling Snow proves what we already knew about Ferguson from Rogue Nation – she’s a bona fide movie star. As a leading lady, her smouldering screen presence holds up perfectly, with her Ingrid Bergman-esque qualities serving the film extremely well in the Cold War sequences as Katya. Her Lauren is less impressive, due to her affected American accent and being a generally less interesting character, but her performances generate some much needed heat here.

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Sharif is no stranger to adapting her own novels for the screen, via her production company Enlightenment Productions, and sadly, although I’m not familiar with previous films such as The World Unseen and I Can’t Think Straight , you wouldn’t know it to look at this one. Even at 93 minutes, Despite The Falling Snow feels less like an adaptation than a mood reel for the source material, giving a précis of the story rather than a whole experience.

The way in which the film is staggered across two time periods is one of the main reasons, but even aside from the Frogger-like crossings between the past and present of the story, it also feels as if the film has been edited within an inch of its life. It feels abridged, almost as though the film has to come in under a time limit, and many of the important beats don’t really get time to land. In one particular case, Katya puts her foot down and tells Misha she’s not going to follow his instructions. The very next scene, she goes right ahead and does what she’s told. With a little extra screen time here and there, the story and its characters might have been that much more involving.

But as becomes abundantly clear, much of what matters to the plot takes place in the flashbacks and there’s a binary feeling to the way in which the film segues between time-frames, with much clunking thematic resonance. The smoothest of these comes when one Ferguson walks out of the state archive in Moscow after a dangerous mission, as another Ferguson walks in. Alas, Lauren is going in there to read about this sort of thing, and so, even the slicker transitions slide the film right back into sub- Who Do You Think You Are procedural before it can really gather any steam.

There’s also a massive cognitive disconnect between the older and younger incarnations of characters. Charles Dance here is very much the same Charles Dance who wrapped in a couple of days on five other films in the last year or so and while a more game Anthony Head shows up with a spectacularly scruffy and tobacco stained performance as another key player, neither of them is around much and neither has much in common with their respective characters in the main plot.

You could argue that this deepens the central mystery, wondering how the characters changed so much over the years, except that this mystery is maddeningly obvious from quite early on, thanks to the deceptively convoluted structure. The opening shot and subsequent prologue spell much of it out in the first ten minutes and the focus drifts right up until the unsatisfactory climax.

Her reliable performances aside, Ferguson is also the subject of Despite The Falling Snow ‘s most striking image – a trompe-l’œil portrait of Katya in an exhibition of new Russian art in 1992, in a gallery setting which is revisited time and time again on the way to an anti-climactic revelation. It’s an image that is somehow less crisp and clipped than the film it’s in, which is perhaps the main reason that she and the artwork are all that linger from this segmented and suspenseless romance.

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Mark is a writer from Middlesbrough, who once drunkenly tried (and failed) to pitch a film about his hometown to a director from Pixar. Fortunately, he…

Film Review: ‘Despite the Falling Snow’

A Cold War romantic espionage thriller, rooted in the suddenly sexy subject of Russia, keeps tripping over its own ineptitude.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

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Here’s a good rule of thumb: If you’re putting out a movie you actually want audiences to see, don’t make “Despite” the first word of the title. “Despite the Falling Snow” is a phrase that barely sticks in the mind for the time it takes to read it; given that the movie wants to be a Cold War romantic espionage thriller, you can imagine a hundred titles that would be more alluring. Yet here’s one case where the tone deaf-ness is far from incidental. The picture was written and directed by the British author Shamim Sarif, adapting her novel of the same name (as she has done twice before, with “The World Unseen” and “I Can’t Think Straight”), and it’s the kind of dud in which the bad decisions pile up as you watch. If the movie had been called “Casablanca” or “Notorious,” it’s still doubtful that a lot of people would want to see it. Given that it’s called “Despite the Falling Snow,” divide that teensy audience by about one-half.

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The movie has a surface similarity to “Allied,” last year’s Brad Pitt-Marion Cotillard World War II thriller, because it’s yet another story of an agent who marries one of the enemy to advance her cause. The agent, in this case, is Katya Krinkova (played by the vibrant Swedish actress Rebecca Ferguson ), a secret dissident in Soviet Russia whose parents were killed by Stalin’s goons when she was just a girl. She is now a spy working for the Americans, and the cell she belongs to has targeted Alexander Ivanov, a.k.a. Sasha (Sam Reid). He’s supposed to be the film’s romantic hero, but he is, in fact, a Soviet bureaucrat of such mealy sweet ineffectuality that his title is “senior assistant to the third deputy minister of foreign affairs.” (He would probably think that “Despite the Falling Snow” is a good title.)

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When a film’s basic strategy is to cut between the past and the present, it should create ripples of anticipatory tension. But “Despite the Falling Snow” is one of those movies in which the cross-cutting keeps destroying all mood and momentum — it feels more like channel-surfing. Half the film follows Katya and Sasha’s courtship in Moscow in 1960 and ’61, culminating in the fateful moment when Sasha defects to the United States, leaving Katya tragically behind. The other half is set in what feels like “the present day” — that is, 1992, just after the fall of the Soviet Union, when the aging Sasha, now played by Charles Dance as a successful but haunted New York businessman, watches as his artist niece goes to Moscow to learn what happened to Katya all those years ago.

Ferguson, in a short blondish wig, plays the niece, too, a gambit that seems like it should mean something but doesn’t. Yet it certainly shows off what a versatile actress Ferguson is. As Lauren, she’s perky and liberated and slightly bratty, especially when she comes on to a high-ranking Russian journalist (Antje Traue). But she makes Katya a gravely sensual figure, with shades of Geneviève Bujold or Emily Watson,  lost in the dream-killing melancholy of the old Soviet Union.

The most confounding failure of “Despite the Falling Snow” is how it portrays the central ambiguity of the love story. Katya has been assigned by Misha (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), the swarthy leader of her cell, to get romantically involved with Sasha. The two meet and flirt at a party in 1959, but she’s just playing along. Then she’s touched by his ideological idealism, though she’s still not in love with him (and why would she be remotely sympathetic to his belief in a regime that’s still rigid in its brutality?). Then, suddenly, she loves him. And then she really loves him. We know because she keeps saying it, but Sarif doesn’t develop the relationship convincingly — it’s like watching freeze-dried old movie passion that someone forgot to add water to.

Russia, as a subject, has been coming up in the world of entertainment (it started with the launch of “The Americans” on FX four years ago), and one could now easily envision Russia becoming a vast new landscape of 21st-century dramatic interface. Putin and Trump. Edward Snowden and Pussy Riot. The twin scandals of fake news and the election hacking. The old Cold War meets the new Cold War. It’s heady and fertile terrain — for journalistic docudrama, for spy-vs.-cyber-spy suspense. But “Despite the Falling Snow,” which is at once overreaching and threadbare, busy and tedious, is like a hastily scrawled sketch for the movies to come.

Reviewed on-line, New York, March 30, 2016. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 93 MIN.

• Production: An Altitude Film Distribution release of an Enlightenment Production, in association with Enlightenment Films Cananda. Producer: Hanan Kattan. Executive producers: Ben White, Hanan Kattan, Lisa Tchenguiz, Katherine Priestly.
• Crew: Director, screenplay: Shamim Sharif. Camera (color, widescreen): David Johnson. Editor: Masahiro Hirakubo.
• With: Rebecca Ferguson, Sam Reid, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Charles Dance, Anthony Head, Antje True, Thure Lindhardt.

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‘despite the falling snow’: film review.

Novelist/filmmaker Shamim Sarif goes to Cold War-era Russia for the espionage-laced love story 'Despite the Falling Snow.'

By THR Staff

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A then-and-now romantic drama tracing all broken hearts back to Cold War-era duplicity, Shamim Sarif’s Despite the Falling Snow finds a Russian-American artist going back to the old country in search of news about an aunt she never knew. Respectably put together but inert, the basic-cable-ready picture has slim theatrical prospects but may attract some attention thanks to current Russophobia .

Rebecca Ferguson (currently onscreen in Life ) plays the artist, Lauren, who in 1991 leaves New York for a Moscow gallery show. (Establishing shots ostensibly set in 1991 make no attempt to hide 21st-century skyscrapers.) Her uncle Alex ( Game of Thrones ‘ Charles Dance, underused here), who defected as a young man, discourages her, but Lauren has heard too much about Katya , the aunt who never made it out of Russia, not to take the opportunity to explore her roots.

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Release date: Mar 31, 2017

The film bounces back and forth between 1991 and the 1950s , observing as a young Alex (Sam Reid) falls in love with Katya (also played by Ferguson). He’s an uncomplicated functionary in the Kremlin’s foreign-affairs department; she, unbeknownst to him, is a spy selling secrets to the U.S. Urged on by her fellow spy Misha (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), himself Alex’s best friend, Katya allows herself to be wooed by Alex despite his embrace of a government that persecuted her family.

Katya is eventually won over, of course, but the film fails to generate much heat as she wrestles with her conscience, then eventually reveals her secret to Alex and convinces him to defect. Known for earlier films and novels that focus on lesbian relationships, Sarif squeezes a brief one in here: a present-day fling between Lauren and Marina ( Antje Traue ), a journalist who pretends to be a fan of Lauren’s art but actually shares an interest in Alex and Katya’s story. That offers a parallel narrative of hidden motives, but Snow does little with the comparison.

Production company: Enlightenment Productions Distributor: CARU Pictures Cast: Rebecca Ferguson, Sam Reid, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Charles Dance, Anthony Head, Antje Traue , Thure Lindhardt Director-screenwriter: Shamim Sarif Producer: Hanan Kattan Executive producers: Ben White, Lisa Tchenguiz , Katherine Priestley Director of photography: David Johnson Production designer: Mina Buric Costume designer: Momirka Bailovic Editor: Masahiro Hirakubo Composer: Rachel Portman Casting directors: Kelly Valentine Hendry , Victor Jenkins, Lina Todd

Rated PG-13, 93 minutes

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Despite the Falling Snow Reviews

The cast's commendable commitment can't hide the film's overall lack of ambition and scope.

Full Review | Feb 12, 2019

With the action jumping backwards and forwards in time, the plot is not always easy to follow, and a gratuitous lesbian romance does little to disguise the fact that the underlying story has run badly out of steam long before the end.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 24, 2017

Respectably put together but inert ...

Full Review | Apr 3, 2017

It's the kind of dud in which the bad decisions pile up as you watch.

Full Review | Apr 1, 2017

So tasteful it's torturous, Despite the Falling Snow is a Cold War espionage thriller for those who like their period-piece action airless and derivative.

Full Review | Mar 30, 2017

Unfortunately, the strong cinematography from David Johnson and costume design by Momirka Bailovic can't overcome a lifeless, poorly structured script from Sarif, based on her own well received novel.

Despite its best intentions, Shamim Sarif's Cold War spy melodrama wastes star Rebecca Ferguson's talents and charisma.

Full Review | Mar 29, 2017

While it struggles to find rhythm, you can't fault Sarif's ambitions.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 30, 2016

A dreary, incompetently plotted and flatly directed Cold War melodrama ...

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Apr 17, 2016

It is a wearily predictable tale of coincidence and tragedy.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 17, 2016

Writer-director Shamim Sarif... is aiming to create a tragic romance out of this intrigue yet misses her target thanks to her contrived plotting and trite dialogue.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 15, 2016

So many shivery night-time clinches in Moscow fill Despite the Falling Snow's modest runtime, you wonder what proportion of the budget went on that ever-whirring snow machine.

There's great potential here, but the execution is far too clunky.

It's a taut and talky film, nicely played by all concerned. But given the big themes, it is a rather small affair with few cinematic qualities.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 14, 2016

It's all very Mills & Boonsky, with plinky piano music and overwrought strings trying to do what the screenplay doesn't, and generate some excitement. Alas, that doesn't work either.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 14, 2016

It just doesn't work.

It features laborious acting and directing, and a screenplay whose revelations are uninteresting, even were they not guessable long in advance.

For all its invocations of Russian history, this is a glorified telenovela at heart.

This hackneyed endeavour struggles to free itself from the shackles of the genre tropes and expectations, never quite doing justice to the originality of the narrative at hand.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 13, 2016

It's as if a quickly discarded, crumpled-up concept was pilfered from John le Carré's waste basket by a romance novelist.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 11, 2016

Despite The Falling Snow Review

15 Apr 2016

Despite The Falling Snow

Rebecca Ferguson, so vibrant in Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation , pulls disappointing double duty in an old-fashioned, espionage-tinged romance that might be more at home on ITV3 than the big screen.

An old-fashioned, espionage-tinged romance that might be more at home on ITV3 than the big screen.

In ‘60s Moscow, she is Katya, a spy in cahoots with an anti-communist cell, who is recruited to get close to idealistic politician Alexander (Reid). It’s a familiar tale of Cold War spying — miniscule cameras, chicanery at the Russian embassy, chases down shadowy cobbled streets — with the inevitable consequence that the personal overtakes the political as Katya begins to fall for her mark.

In the post-Glasnost '90s Ferguson is Lauren (we know it’s the ‘90s, she has short hair), the niece of the defected Alexander (now Charles Dance) who returns to Russia to find out the truth about what happened to Katya. Hooking up — in more ways than one — with political journalist Marina (Trau), the pair dig up the past (hello Anthony Head!), the two timelines mirroring each other in clankingly obvious ways.

Over the stretch of a 350-page novel (by writer-director Shamim Sarif), the relationships and revelations have time to breathe and reverberate. Condensed to 90 minutes it becomes the stuff of overwrought melodrama. All the dramatic beats are hit but with little sensitivity in the writing or feeling for the people. And in case any ambiguity breaks out, Rachel Portman’s over-insistent score will leave you in no doubt how to feel.

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Movies | 15 04 2016

Despite the Falling Snow | Film review - A double dose of romantic spy intrigue

So good as an enigmatic secret agent in Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation , Rebecca Ferguson gets up to more espionage shenanigans in Despite the Falling Snow , but her slinky allure can do little to enliven this stodgy spy tale.

The movie unfolds in Moscow and New York in two different periods, 30 years apart, and Ferguson plays a role in each. In the late-1950s/early-1960s, she is Katya, the loyal wife of earnest young Soviet functionary Alexander (Sam Reid) yet secretly opposed to the regime. And in the early 1990s, she is Lauren, the American artist niece of the older émigré Alexander (Charles Dance), who defected to the US in 1961 but remains unaware of his wife’s fate.

Writer-director Shamim Sarif, adapting her own novel as she did with her previous films, The World Unseen and I Can’t Think Straight , is aiming to create a tragic romance out of this intrigue yet misses her target thanks to her contrived plotting and trite dialogue.

Her stars can’t be faulted, however, and the film certainly looks good, but at a time when the adaptation of John le Carré’s The Night Manager has raised the bar for emotionally tangled espionage intrigue, Sarif’s effort falls well short.

Certificate 12A. Runtime 93 mins. Director  Shamim Sarif

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TX-5EYUNEBU

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Review: Cold war drama ‘Despite the Falling Snow’ boasts Russians, spies and a snooze alert

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Director Shamim Sarif’s “Despite the Falling Snow” begins with promise, featuring the titular precipitation with an almost jaw-dropping beauty. Rebecca Ferguson appears on screen in the Cold War romantic spy drama clad in lush period costume. Unfortunately, the strong cinematography from David Johnson and costume design by Momirka Bailovic can’t overcome a lifeless, poorly structured script from Sarif, based on her own well received novel.

“Despite the Falling Snow” jumps between the years 1959-1961 and 1991, moving from Moscow to New York and back again. In one of a number of bad directorial choices, Ferguson inexplicably appears as both the heroine, spy Katya, and her niece, Lauren. In Moscow in 1959, Katya pursues rising Soviet politician Alexander (Sam Reid) at the encouragement of their friend Misha (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) so that she can share his secrets with the Americans.

However, she soon falls in love with him, complicating her mission. Fast-forward to New York in 1991, and an older Alexander (Charles Dance) laments his wife’s disappearance 30 years earlier, while Lauren tries to discover what happened to her aunt.

Though the film is filled with Russian characters, everyone speaks with a British accent. It serves largely as a distraction, but even a decision this odd can’t animate a movie this dull and inert. “Despite the Falling Snow” is ostensibly a love story set against a Cold War thriller backdrop, but it features no heat and little tension.

-------------

‘Despite the Falling Snow’

Rating: PG-13, for some sexuality and violence

Running time: 1 hour, 33 minutes

Playing: Laemmle Playhouse 7, Pasadena

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Film Review: ‘Despite the Falling Snow’

Here’s a good rule of thumb: If you’re putting out a movie you actually want audiences to see, don’t make “Despite” the first word of the title. “ Despite the Falling Snow ” is a phrase that barely sticks in the mind for the time it takes to read it; given that the movie wants to be a Cold War romantic espionage thriller, you can imagine a hundred titles that would be more alluring. Yet here’s one case where the tone deaf-ness is far from incidental. The picture was written and directed by the British author Shamim Sarif, adapting her novel of the same name (as she has done twice before, with “The World Unseen” and “I Can’t Think Straight”), and it’s the kind of dud in which the bad decisions pile up as you watch. If the movie had been called “Casablanca” or “Notorious,” it’s still doubtful that a lot of people would want to see it. Given that it’s called “Despite the Falling Snow,” divide that teensy audience by about one-half.

The movie has a surface similarity to “Allied,” last year’s Brad Pitt-Marion Cotillard World War II thriller, because it’s yet another story of an agent who marries one of the enemy to advance her cause. The agent, in this case, is Katya Krinkova (played by the vibrant Swedish actress Rebecca Ferguson ), a secret dissident in Soviet Russia whose parents were killed by Stalin’s goons when she was just a girl. She is now a spy working for the Americans, and the cell she belongs to has targeted Alexander Ivanov, a.k.a. Sasha (Sam Reid). He’s supposed to be the film’s romantic hero, but he is, in fact, a Soviet bureaucrat of such mealy sweet ineffectuality that his title is “senior assistant to the third deputy minister of foreign affairs.” (He would probably think that “Despite the Falling Snow” is a good title.)

When a film’s basic strategy is to cut between the past and the present, it should create ripples of anticipatory tension. But “Despite the Falling Snow” is one of those movies in which the cross-cutting keeps destroying all mood and momentum — it feels more like channel-surfing. Half the film follows Katya and Sasha’s courtship in Moscow in 1960 and ’61, culminating in the fateful moment when Sasha defects to the United States, leaving Katya tragically behind. The other half is set in what feels like “the present day” — that is, 1992, just after the fall of the Soviet Union, when the aging Sasha, now played by Charles Dance as a successful but haunted New York businessman, watches as his artist niece goes to Moscow to learn what happened to Katya all those years ago.

Ferguson, in a short blondish wig, plays the niece, too, a gambit that seems like it should mean something but doesn’t. Yet it certainly shows off what a versatile actress Ferguson is. As Lauren, she’s perky and liberated and slightly bratty, especially when she comes on to a high-ranking Russian journalist (Antje Traue). But she makes Katya a gravely sensual figure, with shades of Geneviève Bujold or Emily Watson, lost in the dream-killing melancholy of the old Soviet Union.

The most confounding failure of “Despite the Falling Snow” is how it portrays the central ambiguity of the love story. Katya has been assigned by Misha (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), the swarthy leader of her cell, to get romantically involved with Sasha. The two meet and flirt at a party in 1959, but she’s just playing along. Then she’s touched by his ideological idealism, though she’s still not in love with him (and why would she be remotely sympathetic to his belief in a regime that’s still rigid in its brutality?). Then, suddenly, she loves him. And then she really loves him. We know because she keeps saying it, but Sarif doesn’t develop the relationship convincingly — it’s like watching freeze-dried old movie passion that someone forgot to add water to.

Russia, as a subject, has been coming up in the world of entertainment (it started with the launch of “The Americans” on FX four years ago), and one could now easily envision Russia becoming a vast new landscape of 21st-century dramatic interface. Putin and Trump. Edward Snowden and Pussy Riot. The twin scandals of fake news and the election hacking. The old Cold War meets the new Cold War. It’s heady and fertile terrain — for journalistic docudrama, for spy-vs.-cyber-spy suspense. But “Despite the Falling Snow,” which is at once overreaching and threadbare, busy and tedious, is like a hastily scrawled sketch for the movies to come.

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Despite the Falling Snow

This Cold War love story between a Soviet spy and an American politician is too rushed to make an impact

Time Out says

A problem you often get when authors adapt their own books for the screen is that they’re precious about their work and reluctant to edit. The opposite is the case with British writer-director Shamim Sarif’s film of her novel ‘Despite the Falling Snow’. A romantic drama that skips between late ’50s Moscow and New York at the end of the Cold War in the early ’90s, the characters here are so underdeveloped that they’re practically embryonic. The film tells the story of the relationship between a strait-laced politician (Sam Reid) and Soviet spy Katya (Rebecca Ferguson), which forms so quickly and with so little fanfare that when she admits she’s more interested in what’s in his briefcase than what’s in his trousers, the emotional heft barely registers. ‘Despite the Falling Snow’ is held back by stylistic choices, too. The period detailing is sharp and impressive, but it’s almost impossible to ignore the constant ropey CG snow. What’s more, a Cold War drama in which the Americans speak with exactly the same accents as the Russians is bound to confuse. And clocking in at a lean 93 minutes, there’s simply not enough time for ‘Despite the Falling Snow’ to become the poignant love story it wants to be.

Release Details

• Release date: Friday 22 April 2016
• Duration: 93 mins

Cast and crew

• Director: Shamim Sarif
• Screenwriter: Shamim Sarif
• Rebecca Ferguson
• Charles Dance
• Antje Traue

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Despite the Falling Snow (2016)

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Film Review: ‘Despite the Falling Snow’

Despite the Falling Snow is an ambitious multi-generational political thriller…

…but a lack of depth and exploration of its themes and characters stunts its power. Written and directed by Shamim Sarif (who wrote the novel of the same name upon which the film is based) never takes the time to examine thoroughly what is, in theory, wonderful material.

There are two stories at work in the film which take place forty years apart: one is of a young Alexander (Sam Reid), a man with a reasonable high position in the Kremlin. It opens with his defection to the United States at a Soviet delegation dinner. When he asks about his wife, the American agents tell him they have lost contact. Flash back to a few years earlier where we see the events that led up to his defection, which revolves around the love affair with the aforementioned wife: Katya (Rebecca Ferguson). Ah, but here’s the kink: Katya is working as a spy on behalf of the Americans. Her love affair begins as an assignment from Alexander’s friend, Misha (also a spy): she’s to get close to him and photograph any documents she finds. But of course, things get complicated when Katya begins to fall in love.

Now flash forward to after the fall of the Soviet Union. An older Alexander (Charles Dance) learns that her niece, Lauren (also Rebecca Ferguson) is planning on opening an art exhibition in Moscow, where she hopes to learn more about what happened to Katya, a sore spot for Alexander these days. We follow her through her investigation, which is filled with as much intrigue and romance as the events of forty years prior, complete with skeletons tumbling out of closets at every turn.

The film is packed full of plot. However, it’s never quite as interesting as deep as it could have been or wants to be.

The cast, however, works wonders with the occasionally flimsy scenes they are given to perform. Furtive glances, subtle line readings, and revelatory pauses lend the characters more depth than perhaps was written into them. Rebecca Ferguson perfectly captures the inevitable heartbreak and bitterness that is inevitable in (both) her situations. Anthony Head as an older Misha was a treat to watch. And, of course, Charles Dance always brings a most dignified air to even the schlockiest of productions. (Take heed now to avoid confusion at the outset: the principal Russian characters all speak with British accents. We’re working with Enemy at the Gates rules.)

The problems with the film arise when it comes to the actual storytelling. For all the ambition of its multi-generational tale of love, loss, and politics, Despite the Falling Snow is never specific enough to make it all come together as a cohesive, resonating whole.

The mechanics and parts of an intriguing (and even heartbreaking) story are all there: deception, jealousy, deep-seated resentments, and the unanticipated onslaught of love. While I am not familiar with the source material, I know that it is well regarded. However, none of these elements that might have been fleshed out in the novel are fully examined in the film. Rather than delving into the personal and political lives of the characters, the events of their lives merely unfold. One plot point, one piece of character development unfolds after the other, hinting at three dimensions but stuck in two.

For example, we never really see the process of Katya falling in love with Alexander; the relationship goes from a scene of suspenseful spycraft to marriage, with a jarring jump from deceit to romance.

The same goes for the political tensions of the anti-Kremlin agents spying on behalf of the United States. And, for that matter, Alexander’s own loyalty to the Communist regime. There characters all talk about their allegiances and frustrations, but none of them feel genuine. We don’t *feel* the characters feelings; we merely have to take them at their word as we speed forward. It all feels so glossed over.

Partly at fault is the pacing: the film moves at one speed; there are no crests and troughs, from either an emotional or directorial standpoint. We travel in a straight line rather than an arc. Perhaps another director could have taken the same script and injected it with more depth.

It’s a shame more than it is a travesty that the film doesn’t come together. Despite the Falling Snow is packed with potential that is only ever hints at the greatness that could have been. The themes it wants to explore, the intersection of politics and person and the inseparability of the two, are powerful. But as they unfold, they are only inert.

At a run times of only and hour and a half, it all felt like it needed more room to breate: another twenty minutes of development and exploration. Still, in spite of all its flaws, Despite the Falling Snow is an intriguing romantic thriller held afloat by its fine acting and excellent cinematography and production design.

In Theaters & On Demand March 31, 2017.

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Stephen Jones

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Despite the Falling Snow (2016)

08 Tuesday Nov 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Antje Traue , Charles Dance , Cold War , Defection , Drama , Espionage , Literary adaptation , Moscow , Rebecca Ferguson , Review , Romance , Russia , Sam Reid , Shamim Sarif , Spying

D: Shamim Sarif / 93m

Cast: Rebecca Ferguson, Sam Reid, Charles Dance, Antje Traue, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Thure Lindhardt, Anthony Head

One of the things that never happened in the Golden Age of Cinema was an author being given the opportunity to make a movie of one of their novels or stories. Some were employed to adapt their novels and stories, but none were ever allowed to step behind the camera as well and actually direct the movie. Nowadays, this isn’t so unusual, but it’s also still not very prevalent. So step forward Shamim Sarif, author and movie maker, who has been making movies from her novels from the very beginning. She is possibly unique in this way, and has gained a very good reputation from working on both sides of the creative arena. Despite the Falling Snow is the third movie she’s made from one of her novels, and while she may be well regarded in some quarters as the perfect person to adapt her work – after all, who knows it better than she? – the finished product here isn’t quite the testament to her talents as a director.

The movie begins in New York in 1961 with the defection of a Russian government official called Sasha (Reid). As he’s helped to escape from his Russian handlers, he asks about his wife, Katya (Ferguson). She’s back in Moscow, but his new, US handlers have no idea where she is or what has happened to her. Fast forward thirty years and Sasha (Dance) is a successful restaurateur who has a niece, Lauren (also Ferguson) who is the spitting image of Katya, and who wants to travel to Moscow to try and find out what happened to her aunt. Sasha refuses to go with her, though, so Lauren, who’s lucky enough to be an artist who’s been asked to mount an exhibition in Moscow, heads off by herself.

While Lauren’s story plays out in 1991, Katya’s story plays out in tandem from 1959 to 1961. Katya is a teaching assistant who’s also helping her friend and government official Misha (Jackson-Cohen) steal secrets and pass them on to the Americans. At a party she meets Sasha but is unimpressed by him. It’s only when Misha persuades her to get close to Sasha because of his position in the Kremlin that she finds herself falling in love with him. Meanwhile, in 1991, Lauren meets and befriends a journalist called Marina (Traue) who helps her in finding out about Katya. Marina learns that Misha (Head) is still alive, and they make plans to visit him. When they do they find he’s become an embittered, angry old man who wants nothing to do with them.

Back in 1961, Katya and Sasha wed, but she agonises over whether she should tell him she’s a spy. In 1991, Marina’s behaviour becomes suspicious, and the unexpected arrival of Sasha in Moscow prompts a revelation. Katya’s decision to tell Sasha leads to his agreeing to defect, but thirty years on only Misha holds the key to what happened to her.

A romantic drama set – partly – during a period of intense political and social upheaval, namely the early Sixties, Despite the Falling Snow has such a generic feel to it that it could have been made about any couple in any country at any time, and still have made the same kind of impact. This is thanks to Sarif’s uninspired, pedestrian direction, and a visual style that never rises above formulaic. It’s as if Sarif has forgotten to add the drama needed to make the narrative more than just a succession of events and scenes that show how two people came together and then were separated by fate in the form of expediency. Even when suspicion falls on the officials in the Kremlin, including Sasha and Misha, it’s a moment where real terror at being found out translates instead as a mild concern. Misha is almost fatalistic about the whole thing, a reaction that not even the talented Jackson-Cohen can make convincing; this man should be even more scared than he’s been already.

But if the steady stream of narrative downplaying that infuses the scenes in early Sixties Russia also makes those scenes feel awkward and inconsistent, then spare a thought for those set in 1991. Sarif makes reference to the Berlin Wall having come down two years earlier, but her new Moscow is an uneasy mix of contemporary US stylings and Russian forebearance, as evidenced by Marina’s designer clothing and old Misha’s tower block abode. The juxtaposition jars, and adds to the overall feeling that Sarif wants her characters to look glamorous against the concrete backdrop of post-Stalinist Russia (Katya seems never to be without her red lipstick). The visual conceit is highlighted by Sarif’s decision to have Katya and Sasha, and Lauren and Marina, walk along the same snow-laden stretch of riverside pavement at different times, but instead of creating an echo of past events, it appears to be more of a budgetary deference than a creative decision.

Elsewhere, narrative developments that appear out of nowhere are treated as if they are absolutely necessary to the overall plot, and that includes a left-field decision to have Lauren and Marina begin a sexual relationship. Old Sasha’s willingness to stay home out of harm’s way is overturned by the contents of a fax, while Old Misha’s decision to spill the beans about what happened to Katya is spurred on by feelings of guilt, and that old chestnut, a terminal illness. And when the viewer does find out what happened to Katya, Sarif handles it in such a hamfisted way that any emotional weight the scene might – or should – have engendered with said viewer, is lost before the scene’s even begun.

A lacklustre movie then, one that doesn’t even aim particularly high, but which does feature another of Charles Dance’s supporting roles (is he semi-retired now, is that what’s going on?) and a level of political naïvete that further dilutes the drama that isn’t really there. On the performance side, Ferguson is unable to make much of either role, as Sarif never allows the viewer to engage with them as anything other than under-developed non-characters. Reid is earnest but treading in a pool so shallow it’s practically evaporated, while Traue is allowed to look moody and resentful in equal measure even when she’s kissing Ferguson. Dance and Head bring a degree of old-time gravitas to the proceedings, but even they can’t avoid the pitfalls that are inherent in the script. On this showing, Sarif needs some more time to clarify her goals in making such a movie, and maybe next time, getting someone else to direct.

Rating: 4/10 – Sixties Moscow never looked cleaner, quieter, or more family friendly than it does in this movie, and that’s despite several efforts to make it look as if it’s not brand new; as a drama it never gets started, despite the best efforts of its cast, and by the end you’ll only want to know what happened to Katya just so that you can move on in (roughly) the same way everyone else does: without too much fuss.

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‘Despite the Falling Snow’ Movie Review

Katya never joined him and the story of what happened between these two lovers plays out throughout the film. The movie jumps back and forth between the past and the present. In the present, Alexander (Charles Dance) is a successful man who has taken care of his niece Lauren (also played by Rebecca Ferguson). Lauren is an artist and is taking her exhibit to Russia, against the will of Alexander. Nevertheless, Lauren is insistent about going to Russia to finally find out what happened to Katya, the love of her uncle’s life and his one regret in life.

Katya was a spy working for the Americans when she met Alexander, aka Sasha. Even though he was her “mark” she fell in love with him. He had no idea she was a spy. His best friend Misha (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) was Katya’s handler, also unbeknownst to Sasha. This high-level Soviet diplomat was surrounded by American spies. Sooner or later it was bound to come out and he would take the fall.

As the story jumps back and forth between the past and the present, viewers see the relationships growing and the blanks get filled in, so by the end of the film all is revealed. It is interesting to see Ferguson play both parts – the American spy and the young American looking for information about the American spy. While it might sound confusing, it really isn’t. I just caution the audience to remember that the film does seamlessly jump from the past to the present and vice versa, so pay attention to the age of the characters and the hair and wardrobe.

This is no James Bond spy film. Instead, it is a dramatic look at a love that transcended boundaries. It is a look at two people who had different ideas about their country yet in the end they were the same. It is a compelling story and kept my interest throughout.

Ferguson says about her two roles, “Both Katya and Lauren are strong, independent women. Both had parents that died when they were young.” She says about Katya, “Katya wants to destroy the system that killed her dissident parents, and so Misha finds the perfect recruit to be a spy because of everything Katya was brought up to believe. But she also truly loves Alexander and she’s prepared to sacrifice everything to save him.”

About her other character, the actress says, “Lauren has grown up with the mystery surrounding the loss of her aunt, so for her it’s an inherited grief. She wants to know what happened to Katya because everyone sees them as being very similar and she feels her aunt is still in some way living through her.” She adds, “Her family is Russian and she wants to know about her roots.”

Ferguson is an Ingrid Bergman-style actress. If this film were produced back in her day, Bergman would have been the obvious choice.

Despite the Falling Snow is an absorbing tale of family, the Cold War, and mostly true love. It’s rated PG-13 for some sexuality and violence. It opens in theaters March 31, 2017 and on demand.

About the Author

Francine Brokaw has been covering all aspects of the entertainment industry for over 20 years. She also writes about products and travel. She has been published in national and international newspapers and magazines as well as Internet websites. She has written her own book, Beyond the Red Carpet The World of Entertainment Journalists , from Sourced Media Books.

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DESPITE THE FALLING SNOW: A Whole Lot Of Wasted Potential

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Despite The Falling Snow is a film by novelist and filmmaker Shamim Sharif . The film is based on her book of the same name and plays out over two time periods. In 1950’s Moscow Katya is a spy for the Americans and is encouraged to marry and steal secrets from the young politician Alex. Meanwhile in 1990’s New York Katya’s niece Lauren, an artist, is making plans to discover what happened to her aunt. It stars Rebecca Ferguson in both roles, as Katya and Lauren.

The most successful part of Despite The Falling Snow takes place in the past. The characters have a depth and a warmth to them which although isn’t completely engaging does at least make you interested in their ultimate fates. Katya is played by Rebecca Ferguson and played very well, her chemistry with Alex (played by Sam Reid ) has potential, but you never really understand how she feels about him or what his reasons are for wanting her. Their relationship, in fact, is treated quite superficially. You never feel any strong emotions between them. In fact, you never really feel any emotions about anything.

The Present

The 1992 present, in comparison to the past (but also compared to any other film), is two-dimensional and kind of vacuous. We know from the film’s opening that Alex defected while in New York, hoping that Katya would join him. There he remains, and for some reason has ended up being the father figure to Katya’s niece Lauren. This is all very confusing. Charles Dance plays the older Alex but sounds and looks nothing like Sam Reid , and we never really connect to him as this man who loved Katya so passionately. In fact his disengagement from the past ends up seeming like a complete disinterest in Katya altogether.

Weirdly, despite her great performance as Katya, Rebecca Ferguson falls short as Lauren. She comes across as cold, kind of blank, and with an accent that jumps around quite a bit. Plus, her wig is incredibly off putting. But a lot of this might be due to Sharif’s creation of the character and her direction of  Ferguson . Lauren is supposed to be close to her Uncle Alex but her understanding of him is thin to say the least. Also, her parents died but we don’t know how or when, or how exactly she ended up in Alex’s care. There’s also this part of you that wonders if Lauren isn’t Alex and Katya’s daughter, which keeps your interest going for a while, until you realise she certainly isn’t.

Overall, the 90’s is not very good. Charles Dance and Anthony Head (as the older Misha) don’t really put anything into their roles, although they occasionally, and rather grossly, ham them up. As the present moves to Moscow journalist Marina does nothing to help matters. Antje Traue (as Marina) isn’t a great actress and there is little subtlety in her performance. Marina clearly has her own agenda but you’re not really sure what it is, and when you do find out it’s as cold and boring as the rest of her story.

Poor Production Points

These days even the most amateur of filmmakers can make a small production budget work. So I was less than optimistic about the film as a whole when the opening titles were nothing more than a series of historical film images overlaid with some pretty crass, amateur Times New Roman titles. It was like they’d been created on a version of Windows that just about survived the 90’s. They were off-putting, and were perhaps an indicator of the surprises still to come.

For the most part the production of the past in Despite The Falling Snow is okay, the settings and the costumes are good. Although the scantness of Alex’s kitchen does sort of give away the fact that he hasn’t cooked so much as had the prop department place a saucepan on the cooker. The one truly heinous part of the past is the special effects used while the characters walk alongside the Moskva river (see below). The actors have been placed inside some kind of cobbled together CGI set of real and fake images, and badly. It’s obviousness is irritating, and I was amazed that a filmmaker would use such bad SFX in a contemporary film.

A film set in two time periods is always going to suffer slightly, all the jumping back and forth between storylines can disengage the audience from what is going on. Also, when neither of the time periods is the one we’re living in, as a viewer we have a lot more to understand. This can just add to our confusion.

However, Despite The Falling Snow has many problems in spite of this fact. The mystery of the story is so simple and clichéd it is impossible to engage with. While the narrative plays out sensibly, and predictably, there is no depth. Ultimately, we are never empathise for these characters and importantly are never scared for Katya. The younger actors do well (although Thure Lindhardt is underused) but the direction leaves many of the performances feeling quite cold. Furthermore, bad production choices just make some of the film no better than a TV movie, and one from the 90’s at that. I hate to be harsh, because I feel like there was potential in this film. But it’s a potential that was wasted.

Despite The Falling Snow is out in UK cinemas, with no current plans to release it in the US. Considering I was the first person to buy a ticket for it at my local cinema I predict that this will most likely go straight to DVD in other countries, but stay tuned to the release dates in case of any change.

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MY SWEET LAND: A Somber Warning Call To History, Past, Present, and Future

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Despite the Falling Snow

• In Cold War Moscow, a female spy steals secrets from an idealistic politician - and falls in love with him.
• In 1950s Moscow, communist Katya secretly spies for the Americans in the Cold War arms race. When she lands her biggest assignment, stealing secrets from rising government star Alexander, the last thing she expects is to fall in love with him. Reconciling her passion for him with her beliefs about communism means making the greatest sacrifice - of her life - a sacrifice that Alexander only uncovers thirty years later. — Enlightenment Productions
• Moscow, 1959. Katya is young, beautiful and a spy for the Americans. When she begins spying on Alexander, an idealistic Communist politician, the last thing she expects is to fall in love with him. Her choice between love and duty leads to a nail-biting conclusion that Alexander can only unravel decades later in Boston. His journey back to the dangerous streets of Moscow uncovers a love triangle and betrayals from those he trusted most. — Anonymous

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New York, 1961. Alexander Ivanov, a high-ranked Soviet bureaucrat, reluctantly defects to the West while is part of a diplomatic mission, feeling the grief of being unable to know the fate of his wife Katya, whom he has had to leave behind in Moscow. Only many years later, in 1991, he will finally find out the truth when his niece Lauren travels to Moscow to participate in a painting exhibition.

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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Falling Like Snowflakes’ on the Hallmark Channel, Where A Photographer and Her Ex Rekindle Their Romance On A Trip To Photograph An Elusive Snowflake

Where to Stream:

• Falling Like Snowflakes
• Hallmark Channel

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It’s Christmas in July ! At least on the Hallmark Channel, where you can catch a new series of holiday-themed movies all month, starting with Falling Like Snowflakes . In the newest Hallmark romance, a photographer heads out during a winter storm to try and photograph a rare type of snowflake, and is joined by an old high school boyfriend who wants to make sure she stays safe. Speaking of playing it safe, let’s talk about this script, and how the only tension in the film involves a literal patch of black ice…

FALLING LIKE SNOWFLAKES : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A photographer, Teagan (Rachel Dalton), hikes across a snowy hilltop, pausing to lay down a piece of black fabric on the ground. She focuses her lens and takes some incredibly close-up, detailed shots of the snowflakes that land on it.

The Gist: Teagan is a photographer who specializes in snowflakes – so far, she has taken photos of 34 of the 35 different kinds of snowflakes that exist, and they’re all on display at a local art gallery. When a wealthy businessman and art collector, Mr. Garrett (Michael Gordin Shore), visits the gallery, he asks her why she hasn’t photographed the 35th type of snowflake, an elusive 12-sided flake, she explains that for such a snowflake to exist there must be precise weather conditions she has yet to encounter. Mr. Garrett proposes a deal: if she can find and photograph a 12-sided snowflake to complete her collection, he’ll buy them all. It’s quite the offer, considering the proceeds would go directly to the local community center where she teaches a photography class to kids. The center’s heater is broken, obviously, and this money would go a long way toward putting smiles on kids’ frozen little faces, etc. etc.

Eventually Teagan learns that one of her young photography students is Julie, the daughter of her old high school boyfriend Noah Cooper (Marcus Rosner). When Teagan reconnects with Noah, it’s awkward at first, but they rekindle a friendship and remember that they’re both into weather and snow in their own unique ways – Teagan with her snowflake photos, and Noah because he left his job as an atmospheric scientist (a.k.a. a weather man) to take over the local snow plow business from Teagan’s father. When Teagan decides to chase a big storm to catch the perfect photo for her collection, Noah offers to drive her in his plow to make sure she stays safe.

Meanwhile (these kinds of films don’t usually have a “Meanwhile” so where we go…) a rival photographer named Suzanne (Julia Dyan) catches wind of the fact that Mr. Garrett desperately wants a photo of the 12-sided snowflake, so she sets off to capture one for herself to sell it to him, that low-down, dirty snow sneak. As Teagan and Noah head into the eye of the storm, with Suzanne on their heels, they find themselves in the midst of some weather-related glitches (but don’t worry, it’s nothing a few tire chains and newly-requited romance can’t fix).

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? I couldn’t help but think that this movie was essentially just a mild-mannered version of Twister , with a pair of formerly estranged storm chasers/lovers brought together for one more big storm, though this version obviously has much less danger and grit.

Our Take: The biggest fault of Falling Like Snowflakes is its inability to acknowledge conflict or chaos in any way. Hallmark movies all have happy endings and minimal drama, but what stood out in Falling Like Snowflakes was just how easily the tension in the film is broken and resolved. Life is messy and this film offers several instances of that: Noah is a widower trying to give his daughter a better life. Teagan has a professional rival that threatens her success. Teagan loses her camera in the snow during an especially dangerous section of the storm, and thinks she loses all her photos. But every one of these problems is resolved handily or brushed aside, suggesting that for every problem in life, there is a band-aid and a happy ending. Teagan never even bats an eye when she loses her camera, nor does she stress about the fact that the children’s community center really needs her ! It’s as if the writers forgot that there was an actual goal or purpose to her storm-chasing halfway through writing the script.

It is especially entertaining that the way that Teagan triumphs over her photography rival, Suzanne, is simply because it turns out Suzanne is just a really bad photographer whose pictures, it turns out, are out of focus. But again, it’s an easy out. Once we learn that, Suzanne is a non-entity. Similarly, the photos that Teagan took during her storm-chasing trip all seemed to be lost – that could have made for an interesting plot pivot, if she actually had to address that and admit it to Mr. Garrett. But no, Noah found her camera in the snow, and it turns out, the camera did capture that rare 12-sided snowflake after all. I certainly don’t mind a happy ending or a tidy film that resolves all its major plot points, but in Falling Like Snowflakes , most of those seem to fall away, as if a plow with ice melt ran over them and they simply disappeared. The only thing that the film (snow) banks on is that Teagan and Noah kiss at the end. But we knew that would happen.

Parting Shot: On Christmas morning, Teagan and Noah stand on a snowy mountain looking out at the vista below. “I want to come back here every Christmas,” she tells him, and he reassures her, “We will.” And then they kiss.

Performance Worth Watching: Julia Dyan is the only character that brings anything complex to her role as Suzanne. She’s not a sinister or conniving as I truly hoped she’d be, but the fact that she’s simply inept is still a clever twist.

Memorable Dialogue: When Mr. Garrett asks Teagan why, if there are 35 known types of snowflakes, she has only photographed 34 of them, she replies with the conviction of Indiana Jones attempting to procure the Holy Grail, “The twelve-sided stellar dendrite. It’s probably the rarest snowflake there is.”

Our Call: SKIP IT. Falling Like Snowflakes is among the most bland Hallmark movies I’ve sat through. Unlike a good, useful packed powder, this one is just a heavy, wet blanket.

Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer living in Massachusetts. Her biggest claim to fame is the time she won on the game show Chain Reaction .

• movie reviews
• Stream It Or Skip It

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