For someone whose family went through this, it was a very emotional film to watch. My great-grandparents and grandparents lived in Shanghai from the twenties to the fifties. Watching this imagining my family having to go through similar issues made it really hard to watch.

It meant a lot to get a glimpse of what Shanghai might’ve been like in those years, what living there as a refuge was like, being driven out by the communists, having to flee to yet another country. This was something that they did not like to speak of, so I did not have much knowledge of it.

My one problem with the film -is the way the family treated Sofia at the end. Yes, they were probably too proud (willing to live off her), very judgemental of her, ashamed of her – but I can not imagine them purposefully leaving someone behind!

I hope that others will also enjoy it. The sets, costumes, general mis-en-scene seems very realistic. It has exceptionally fine actors, Ralph Fiennes, Natasha Richardson and Hiroyuki Sanada and others. I would say it’s worth a watch for most people – though they may not get as much out of the film as a Russian descendant, it’s still quite good.