It’s like being subjected to one of those up-close-and-personal vignettes that has everything - except a conclusion. While the pair’s eventual union proves to be plenty heartwarming, scribe Michael Winship neglects to acknowledge that when you spend pretty much every waking minute with an attractive member of the opposite sex and your hormones are just coming into full bloom, a greater miracle would have been if Gordeeva and Grinkov’s relationship had remained forever chaste.Īs the plaintive piano music weaves a melancholy mood and the super slow-mo highlights of their stirring chemistry begin to resemble a protracted dreamscape, the production inevitably grates. The whole enterprise is augmented by David Leary’s emotive narration. Under Robert Dustin’s sensitive direction (he also produced), “My Sergei” - based on the bestselling book of the same name - is a poignant, squishy Valentine, shifting about midway from their professional triumphs and disappointments to the splendor of their powerful love. Gordeeva, too, regularly addresses the camera directly to amplify points about her deceased partner. The biodoc combines actual skating footage of the magical pair with actors portraying them in competition at various ages, as well as interviews with family members and peers like Paul Wylie, Scott Hamilton, Kristi Yamaguchi and Brian Boitano. 20, 1995, when Grinkov, only 28, collapsed on the ice from a heart attack while practicing for a forthcoming tour and died. A docudrama that is far more docu than drama, film is framed by the real Gordeeva telling the story of how she and Grinkov met when they were mere kids, became skating partners, grew into a championship act on ice, won a pair of Olympic gold medals (in 1988 and again in ’94), fell in love, married and created a daughter.

My sergei ekaterina gordeeva