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Une Execution Ordinaire - An Ordinary Execution (12A)
- Consumer Advice: Contains moderate sex references and descriptions of torture
- Run time: 1 hour 45 mins
- Language: French
- Genre: Drama
- Release date: 26th November 2010
- Starring: Marina Hands, Andre Dussollier, Edouard Baer
- Directed by: Marc Dugain
- Distributor: Arrow Films
Plot Synopsis
Set in the last few days of Stalin's reign, An Ordinary Execution is the Soviet Union's history re-written; a story about the imagined encounter between the ailing dictator and a young doctor, Anna.
Blessed, or rather cursed due to the extreme jealousies from her work colleagues, Anna has the ability to miraculously heal with her hands. Word spreads and patients fight to get her attention. Office politics are further heightened due the fact that almost every red-blooded male appears to want to jump her bones. Beauty and talent does not appear to be doing Anna any favours. And there's worse to come.
Her healing hands reaches the ears of the aging Joseph Stalin and he decides to take her on as his secret physcian to tend to his aches and pains. Not a bad gig you would think, plum job with the country's number one man. Not so. Obsessed with keeping up appearances and not wanting to look weak in the eyes of his people, the job comes with some harsh restrictions. The worse, being that in order to maintain the secret, Anna must split from her beloved scientist husband. Anna must obey or face being hauled off to the infamous Lubyanka prison. Not to mentioned, the 'unexplained' disappearance of her loved ones.
Based on his own hugely successful novel of the same name, Marc Dugain's debut feature, An Ordinary Execution, is grim, dark and intriguing as Stalin reveals his 'crazy' through his incessant ramblings whilst he is being treated. Hands is mesmerizing and excels in her role as the passive paranoid doctor.