In 1984, Andrei Konchalovsky—the famed Soviet filmmaker who had more recently made a stunning move to the U.S.—was back at the Cannes Film Festival, this time not in competition and with a new challenge: selling a film.seemed like it was a surefire for arthouse acclaim, being a post-WWII drama starring Nastassja Kinski , a troubadourish Keith Carradine, and even an elderly Robert Mitchum. Yet the film was without distribution, and had no apparent buyers in sight.
It is here that Konchalovsky would meet Andrei Tarkovsky, his collaborator who would ultimately eclipse him and the rest of his generation of Soviet filmmakers in the eyes of the wider film world. But while Tarkovsky and Konchalovsky were having their own artistic fallout over the course that Tarkovsky was taking with, which developed a new Soviet style of neorealism that blended the professional trio playing the central love triangle with a massive cast of non-professional actors.
But Konchalovsky’s ambivalence to the U.S.S.R. and its bureaucracy led him to abandon his privileged position within Soviet society and head to Hollywood, where any amount of good luck he had was marred by the realities of the capitalist industry he found himself within. “I can’t make love to her,” Ivan tells Mrs. Wynic. “You dreamed about her too long,” she replies. “She lives in your dreams, not in your body.” But Ivan can’t live in reality, so he runs.