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It is 1940. Chuchu and Luo Xiaoman are Chinese students who have been sent to study in Moscow, at the International School. She is 13; he is 12. Xiaoman is from Yanan, Mao's base after the Long March; Chuchu had seen her father executed by Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang. The youngsters fit in well and learn to speak Russian... A large group of students, including Chuchu, leave for summer camp in Byelorussia accompanied by their teacher, Miss Vera. Xiaoman remains behind... The Nazis invade the Soviet Union. Moscow remains unoccupied. Xiaoman takes a job delivering condolence letters to soldiers' families. At one apartment, he finds a mother has died. Her very young daughter, Nadia, has not realized it... The summer camp is occupied by Germans. Miss Vera is murdered. One of the Russian boys, Carl, is half-German, and helps the others to escape. They are quickly recaptured. Chuchu and several other students are sent by Gen. von Dietrich to work as servants at Nazi headquarters in the ... Written by
David Carless
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"Red Cherry" follows a pubescent Chinese girl, ChuChu, and boy, Luo Xiaoman, from their prewar children's camp in Russia through WWII as they become de facto orphans caught up in the horrors of war. The film leapfrogs through time and bounces back and forth between the two kids, who become separated, making for a herky-jerky flow while giving us peek-a-boo glimpses of how they are coping against a backdrop of the deprivation and tragedy that is war. On the upside, the film is a well acted, engaging, evocative drama. On the downside, the DVD I watched had only mediocre video quality and poor, near monochrome, color. Recommended only for foreign film buffs into war dramas. (B)
Note - This is not the best movie ever made, it is not propaganda, and it is not seen through the eyes of the child.