citrin@ucbvax.UUCP (Wayne Citrin) (08/13/84)
This is a movie without a real focus. It isn't sure whether it wants to be a movie about homosexuality at an English public school, about students' political maneuvering at said school, or about why a young man would betray his class and country and become a spy for the Russians. The film is mainly about one student with ambitions to become one of the school leaders, but when his homosexual relationship with another student is discovered, he is punished by his peers and he loses his opportunity to advance. This and the other scenes of public school life are pretty well done, but the idea that his resentment should form the entire basis for his later decision to defect to the Russians is unconvincing. The film is presented as a reminiscence of the man during his later years in Moscow, and although the film was undoubtedly inspired by the Burgess/MacLean spy scandals, the public school story could have stood on its own without the unnecessary framework of the Communist defection, which in fact is just presented at the beginning, then completely forgotten until the end of the film. The photography is not bad, and the two lead actors, who play the homosexual student and a communist classmate, are all right, particularly the communist, who took what could have been a two-dimensional role and added some depth, but the other characters are faceless and unmemorable. "Another Country" was not bad, but it could have been much better. I give it **1/2 (out of ****). Wayne Citrin (ucbvax!citrin)