Sasha

For Judy and Barry Williams of Bel Air, the Christmas season is more than a holiday; it is also the time that they remember and celebrate the adoption of their son, Donald. On Dec. 2, 1993, the couple, in their late 40s, boarded a plane to Russia to adopt a little boy from the region of Perm, about 1,000 miles northeast of Moscow, toward Siberia. The child was in poor health, suffering from severe hip dysplasia that nearly fused the tops of his legs to his hips. He also shared Judy Williams' birthday.

"The New Sweet Style," by Vassily Aksyonov. Translated by Christopher Morris. Random House. 480 pages. $27.95.Exuberant, sardonic and outspoken, the Russian satirical novelist Vassily Aksyonov has been a leading writer of his generation since the 1960s. Born in 1933, he witnessed firsthand Stalin's reign of terror, Siberian gulags, Khrushchev's illusory "thaw," and the 1966 show trials of Andrei Sinyavsky nand Yuly Daniel that crushed all the hopes of intellectual freedom this thaw had raised.

BOB ENGLISH and Arlene Blume, an Ellicott City husband and wife, woke up Christmas morning to greet two excited children and a grandmother.Their little girl exclaimed, "There are boxes under the tree and boxes under the window!" to weary parents who spent Christmas Eve assembling the dollhouse and Matchbox car garage.Nothing unusual, you say?Last year, Bob and Arlene were alone in their house.It's an understatement to say that 1996 was a big year.After taking a class on adoption from Adoption Support Network, Bob and Arlene flew to Lithuania on a Saturday in April, met Sasha and David -- their family-to-be -- on a Sunday, and signed adoption papers the next day.The adoption was final Memorial Day, when they brought the children home.

Language isn't a barrier where there's love."Potselui mama," Dee Dove says in Russian with a hint of a Virginia accent, as she purses her lips and places them against ** her new 3-year-old son's cheek, waiting patiently for a return peck.Since adopting Alexander Victorovich from an orphanage in St. Petersburg, Russia, nearly two months ago, Mrs. Dove, 32, and her husband, Kenneth, 35, have depended on a combination of love, a foreign language dictionary and handwritten notes of phonetic spellings to communicate statements such as "I love you" and "Don't throw."

Language isn't a barrier where there's love."Potselui mama," Dee Dove says in Russian with a hint of a Virginia accent, as she purses her lips and places them against ** her new 3-year-old son's cheek, waiting patiently for a return peck.Since adopting Alexander Victorovich from an orphanage in St. Petersburg, Russia, nearly two months ago, Mrs. Dove and her husband, Kenneth, have depended on a combination of love, a foreign language dictionary and handwritten notes of phonetic spellings to communicate statements such as "I love you."

Orphanage. It's a word that can create a mental image of sad-eyed children in drab clothes shuffling into a gloomy dining hall to eat cold mush on tin plates. Or coughing and weeping as they huddle under tattered blankets in their dark, drafty dormitory.The adult keepers of this place would be grim, penny-pinching tyrants with thin lips and quivering nostrils who take sadistic pleasure in tormenting the little waifs.Of course, I've never been in an orphanage, so my vision is based on old British movies about orphanages as they may have existed when Charles Dickens was writing about them.

MOSCOW -- When Sasha entered the hospital for tests a few weeks back, he already knew what the diagnosis would be. His parents had bribed the doctor to "discover" a stomach ulcer.Sasha, 17, has received his draft notice and is scheduled to report for duty soon. But the hospital certificate, which cost his parents several months' pay, should get him a deferment."All my friends are doing stuff like this to stay out of the army. Only kids with no money and no connections get drafted these days," said Sasha, who asked that his last name not be used.

FREDERICK -- You could say that Diana and Mike Bartel became instant parents. They didn't do it the nine-month way. Nor did they go through a long, drawn-out adoption process. Six weeks after the Bartels saw pictures of Russian sisters, Masha, 4 1/2 , and Sasha, 3 1/2 , the girls came to Frederick to live.Adoption had always intrigued Mrs. Bartel, 35, and Mr. Bartel, 34, who might someday have a biological child of their own. In late October, the couple went to a public meeting on adoption in Rockville, Montgomery County.

The Westview, one of Baltimore's earliest multiplexes, has recently begun an adventurous art film policy; so ambitious is the theater's management to crack the upscale market that at one point it had "Europa, Europa," "Mediterraneo," "Night on Earth"and "Where Angels Fear to Tred" playing simultaneously. That's a film festival in a bucket.But "For Sasha," the new film at the Westview, isn't an art film. It isn't even close to an art film. In fact, it's an anti-art film.In the original French, its title is "Pour Sasha," but I would call it "Poor Sasha," because poor Sasha is in a turgid, overwhelming and pulpy French romantic melodrama set against a somewhat mythologized version of the Six-Day War. It's derived, moreover, entirely from long-defunct Hollywood formulas; it even has violins at the mushy parts.

The Westview, one of Baltimore's earliest multiplexes, has recently begun an adventurous art film policy; so ambitious is the theater's management to crack the upscale market that at one point it had "Europa, Europa," "Mediterraneo," "Night on Earth" and "Where Angels Fear to Tred" playing simultaneously. That's a film festival in a bucket!But "For Sasha," the new film at the Westview, isn't an art film. It isn't even close to an art film. In fact, it's an anti-art film.In the original French, its title is "Pour Sasha," but I would call it "Poor Sasha," because poor Sasha is in a turgid, overwhelming and pulpy French romantic melodrama set against a somewhat mythologized version of the Six-Day War. It's derived, moreover, entirely from long-defunct Hollywood formulas; it even has violins at the mushy parts.