Window to Paris

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Window to Paris ★★ 1995 (PG-13)

East and West meet unexpectedly when a young music teacher (Dontsov) rents a room in St. Petersburg with a secret window that opens onto a Paris rooftop. Loony adventures ensue as Dontsov and his friends escape their dreary existence to exploit the bounties of Western capitalism in this sharp satire of Russian social ills. Relentless humor based on cross-cultural stereotypes wears thin (the Russians are cantankerous drunks; the Parisians, self-important snobs), but it keeps a sunny cast upon what could have been a scathing commentary. Russian and French with subtitles. 92m/C VHS . RU FR Serguej Dontsov, Agnes Soral, Viktor Michailov, Nina Oussatova; D: Yuri Mamin; W: Arkadi Tigai, Yuri Mamin; M: Aleksei Zalivalov, Yuri Mamin.