MOVIE REVIEW : A Bittersweet Portrait of Soviet Union’s Final Weeks : A Boston-based Russian teacher comes to terms with her identity in the warm documentary ‘Bread and Salt.’

Jeanne Collachia’s warm and thoughtful documentary “Bread and Salt” (at the Sunset 5 Saturdays and Sundays at 11 a.m. through Aug. 1) takes its title from an old Russian proverb: “Eat bread and salt and always tell the truth.” You have the feeling that everyone in this film adheres to that kind of honesty.

“Bread and Salt” is simple in form, a record of two friends visiting Moscow in June, 1991. For Irina Muravyova, an attractive and vital Boston-based teacher of Russian--and a doctoral candidate in Russian literature at Brown University--the trip is her first return to her homeland since 1985. Accompanying her is Richard Lourie, an American Sovietologist and translator of Russian descent. While Muravyova visits the places of her past and experiences emotional reunions with relatives, Lourie provides the historical and political context for her story, which involves her coming to terms with her identity as an American rather than as a Russian.

Together and alone they talk to people everywhere they go, and as a result “Bread and Salt” is an invaluable record of what proved to be the final weeks of the Soviet Union. Even so, since much of what the film deals with is by now familiar, the film surely will be most rewarding for Soviet specialists or those with some ties to the former U.S.S.R.

Moscow has the bustling atmosphere of a great metropolis, right down to the McDonald’s ubiquitous golden arches logo and billboards promoting Coca-Cola, but Muravyova soon discovers firsthand the severity of inflation--at an open-air market she buys strawberries for the mother of a dying veteran of the Afghanistan War who can barely afford them. Everywhere she and Lourie turn they encounter individuals full of despair and fear for an uncertain future.

“Bread and Salt” is truly bittersweet: The people are wonderful, embracing and good-humored but their stories, both past and present, are invariably tinged with sadness and loss. The consolation--and it is not inconsiderable--is how comfortable everyone seems speaking with the utmost candor; obviously, such freedom of speech would have been impossible only a very short time ago.

As it turns out, history gave “Bread and Salt” (Times-rated Family) a surprise ending that has also the beneficial effect of tying up smartly a sometimes rambling film. Only six weeks after returning to America, Muravyova and Lourie find themselves back in Moscow to discover what people have on their minds in the wake of the fall of the U.S.S.R.

As they prepare to depart a second time Muravyova and Lourie find their own attitudes reflecting those with whom they have talked. Lourie takes a scholarly let’s-wait-and-see view of the upheaval, but Muravyova is overjoyed for her former countrymen.

‘Bread and Salt’

A World Artists release of an MML production in association with Program Bravo, Russian Central Television and Company Ostankino. Director-editor Jeanne Collachia. Writers-producers Irina Muravyova, Richard Lourie. Cinematographer Charles Domokos, Gerard Hooper. Music Dick Hamilton. Sound Robert Silverthorne. In English and Russian with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour, 34 minutes.

Times-rated Family (suitable for all ages except the very young).