April 27, 1993 -- ``Close to Eden'' is a film that sort of reminds me of home, home on the range, that is.

I've heard that Siberia is a lot like Wyoming. It could well be, because ``Close to Eden,'' a film about some people on the Mongolian frontier, had settings that looked a lot like parts of the Laramie Valley. Rolling hills of short prairie grasslands with mountains in the distance and not a tree in sight. Lots of wind, too. Sound familiar?

The film, by Nikita Mikhalkov, is an interesting slice of life film about a family of Mongolians trying to live their traditional life in spite of Communist edicts about how many children they can have.

It is also the story of a Russian stuck on the frontier because it is the only place he can get a job. Far from his family, he exudes Russian angst. The story concerns ancient customs fighting with modern culture. It also has a number of funny scenes along with a really gross scene of the butchering of a sheep (while the credits were not in English, I assume the ASPCA did not approve of the way this film was made). All in all, it is a pretty good, film, but not quite up to the level of ``Indochine,'' by which it was beaten for best foreign film in the recently-conducted Academy Awards. It rates a C+

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