Review: Saving Hope
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 07 6, 2013
Living in the new Russia is not easy, in the year 2,000. The cost of medical treatment forces young mother Alexandra Pavlova to wait before taking her child to hospital.  Nadezhda had been fighting off the illness but now her temperature is rising. Alexandra and her husband Yuri load her into their small car and drive 100km.  The hospital doctor has worked for two months without pay and the parents will have to supply prescribed medicines themselves.  The little girl also has heart trouble.Nadezhda translates as Hope. Alexandra had worked in a laboratory which produced viruses and is well informed about illnesses. However she is unaware that the national security agents are tracing people who are trying to steal deadly viruses to aid terrorists.  An agent called Sergei is reluctantly working with a CIA agent, as neither of them wants Iran to access biological weapons.  Alexandra's single girl friend Lena suggests that to get more money, they can pretend to be keen to meet western men, who will buy them clothes which they can then sell. Such is Alexandra's desperation to save Hope that she agrees.I found this an interesting study of the economy.  Doctors are offered bathrobes in lieu of salary and car factory workers are paid in car parts. Not all business is legitimate. There is an internet café - some can afford to use it. Like Renko of Martin Cruz Smith's novels, the impoverished government man Sergei has no desire to leave Russia but accepts changes. The average citizen sustains their families by planting a vegetable garden, in the Soviet-era and democracy needing home-grown beet, potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers and squash.  The people are inured to having to queue, bribe and beg, as there is not enough of any service to go around. The characters undergo the same tragedies, celebrations and betrayals as could happen anywhere else, casting a wistful eye on countries which appear better off by comparison.