Tag: Russian

Parquet (Parket)

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

A beautiful hotel lays the stage for a couple nights of memories, recriminations and recaptured romance in the absorbing Parquet. A blistering three-hander featuring extremely game performances from the three leads, Agata Kulesza, Evgenia Dodina and Andrzej Chyra, the film is a bittersweet exploration of lost youth.

Chyra plays Cockatoo, a middle-aged man who moves across the dance floor with purpose, downing countless free glasses of champagne. He is at the 25th anniversary event of his tango club, looking for the two women with which he shared both the dancefloor and the bedroom. He meets Valencia (Dodina) first — a cynical and bitter woman who doesn’t look too happy to see him — before they both bump into Elisabeth (Kulesza) who bursts onto the scene by letting a wolf-like dog burst onto the dance-floor.

I’ve heard from Russians that they don’t live longer, they live faster. This is certainly true in this film, which is filled with intense emotions and a desire to act out in order to recover lost youth. They are all in their middle age, but acting as if they are 25 years longer, leading up to a final dance that may be their last. Intense rehearsals and shouty performances play out against the party raging downstairs, our attention gripped by the intensity of all three players.

Feeling at times like a Russian take on Silver Linings Playbook, especially in its conflation of mental health issues and dancing, Parquet shares similarly abrasive characters working through deep hurt in order to recover themselves. But unlike the American film, the screenplay keeps its cards close until much later in the film.

Legendary Russian screenwriter turned director in the last 15 years, Aleksandr Mindadze has great confidence in his characters. The screenplay takes a minimalist approach, drip-feeding us information that slowly deepens the richness of the film’s conflicts. There’s a touch of classic stuck-in-one-place Soviet cinema here, evoking both the melancholy-suffused romantic meeting in Station for Two (1982) to the group clashes of Garage (1980) — both directed by Eldar Ryazanov. But while those films tracked their characters in medium takes, the cinematography of Parquet is a masterclass of close-ups by Romanian DOP Oleg Mutu.

The handheld camera seems to move spontaneously, keeping extremely close to its characters and immersing us into their lives. There’s rarely a full-body shot, meaning that the dance is caught in terms of shuffling feet, hands and hips, giving the film a strong sense of sensuality. This closeness of tone means that when the film does cut to a medium shot it creates a striking effect, recalibrating the relationships between the characters. This is even more pronounced by the film’s final haunting wide shot — the only one in the film —which puts this struggle to retain youth into a haunting context.

This is complemented by the music. The tango setting means that there is music almost constantly on in the background, draping the entire film in a deeply nostalgic tone. While “Por una Cabeza” — done to death in thousands of other films — is nowhere to be heard, these timeless tango classics provide an ironic backdrop to the three players who cannot escape the steady dance of time.

Parquet plays in the Main Competition strand of the Tallinn Film festival, running from 13th to 29th November.

Brotherhood (Bratstvo)

Posted on by victorfraga

Afghanistan, 1989. The Soviet army is on the verge of withdrawing from the country when a bomber is shot down. A literal Chekhov’s gun is confiscated from the pilot, who turns out to be the son of General Vasilev. Thus, an operation is set in motion to rescue him from Mujahideen captivity. The typical band of misfits are gathered, and have to deal with rebels, smugglers, traitors, translators and an increasing lack of purpose.

A film of many names and based on actual events, Brotherhood (aka Leaving Afghanistan) can be seen as Russia’s first Vietnam movie (Kevin Reynolds’s solid Soviet-Afghan themed tank 1988 film The Beast was an American production). Bucking the last years’ trend of flag-waving films – such as Stalingrad (Fyodor Bondarchuk, 2014), Tankers (Konstantin Maximov, 2018) and T-34 (Aleksei Sidorov, 2019) – set during the Great Patriotic War, Brotherhood quickly ran into trouble in Putin’s Russia by instead dealing with the Soviet Union’s forgotten war in Afghanistan.

Some veterans were incensed at the unconventional portrayal of Soviet soldiers. And clearly the protagonists in the Soviet military are not presented as paragons of virtue. They are guzzling vodka and looting ’80s artifacts like ghettoblasters and the Sony Walkman.

But perhaps surprisingly, the film is rather even-handed in its portrayal of the Mujahideen enemy (who of course history would later see morph into warlord factions and eventually the Taliban). The other are given a voice in the form of an erudite leader figure and are seen as more than faceless fundamentalists. I would have wished for more depth to the Afghani liaison, representing the Afghanistan government. In the few scenes he features, it is mostly to beg for harder Soviet measures against the rebels. But that a multifaceted look at the deep complexities of the Soviet-Afghan War lies beyond what can be expected of one film.

Brotherhood only grants a minimum of exposition in the form of overheard TV spots of the Soviet withdrawal, and to get the most out of the film the average Western viewer would do well to at least visit Wikipedia for a history refresher.

Even with accounting for some beautiful mountain scenery (shot in the Caucasus rather than on-location, naturally), the film remains gritty rather than visually sumptuous. Despite the controversial subject matter, the director did have enough support from higher-up veterans in the Russian military that it was possible to shoot scenes with authentic APCs and Mi-24 attack helicopters, which adds a lot to the sense of realism. Special mention must go to some thoroughly disturbing sound effects. Never has the horror of trying to breathe with knife and gunshot wounds been better portrayed.

The war sadly remains topical, with the ongoing Western engagement in Afghanistan’s war without end. The competent Brotherhood is a must for anyone interested in the subject matter. A rare opportunity to see Russian cinema deal with its very own Vietnam.

Brotherhood is based on the memoirs of Afghan war veteran turned FSB spy chief Nikolai Kovalyov. It screened at the Russian Film Week in December, a month which also saw a French DVD and Blu-ray release. Streaming rights yet to be determined.

A tale of two ethnicities

Posted on by victorfraga

The Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival is now on its 23rd edition. It takes place between November 15th and December 1st in the Estonian capital. DMovies have followed the event live, and we have published exclusive reviews with all 21 films in Competition and also an interview with the jury president, the iconic British director Mike Newell.

This is has been a very special year for the Festival, as it opened up a side event called KinoFF in Eastern the cities of Narva and Kohtla-Järve. Narva is fright on the border with Russia, and nearly 95% of the population is ethnically Russian, while Kohtla-Järve is more or less evenly split between ethnic Russians and Estonians. This may seem an unremarkable event in any other country, but in Estonia it acquires an entire different dimension. That’s because the two communities have a history of division and resentment, with little prospect of inregration.

We spoke to the Hannes Aava (pictured below), the Programmer and Head of Press and Communicatiosn at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, in order to learn a little bit about the recent history of Estonian cinema, how KinoFF began, , and whether cinema can indeed work as a bridge between two historically segregated communities!

…

.

Victor Fraga – Can you please tell about the connection between the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival and ethnic Russians? Have your overcome a lots of barriers?

Hannes Aava – Just over a quarter, 26%, of the population of Estonia is Russian. We have screened in Eastern Estonia before. We used to screen in 11 cities around the country, but we had to drop most of them when we got the Fiapf (International Federation of Film Producers Associations) A-category status. We are only allowed to screen in one city, and we need to apply for extension, for side festivals. Fiapf is a very powerful organisation because the global producers are behind it!

Russian audiences have been the most devoted fans because Russian films are doing very well. Russian audiences naturally tend to watch more Russian films, and there are a lot of good Russian films. Narva and Kohtla-Järve were the first cities that agreed to support us. It would be financially impraticable for us to launch a brand new festival in these cities, so we needed their support. Kohtla-Järve is home to out the mining and oil shale industry, our primary source of energy. Approximately 60% of our energy comes from there. That itself is a very interesting and controversial topic because that’s the dirtiest way of getting energy. Only Estonia and China do that in a large scale.

VF – Can you please tell us where the initiative came from?

HA – It’s a shifting mindset. There was a lot of Russophobia when the country became independent in the 1990s. The Russians didn’t feel very safe here. This is the first time in about 25 years that the Estonians are realising that we shouldn’t neglect the Russian minority.

We have been talking integration for a very long time. The word integration itself is a very problematic word. We should instead talk about peaceful co-existence, so that people don’t lose their identity. The integration narrative always had this secret clause that one should become the other. It suggests that Russians can’t keep their identity as it it, that they should adopt Estonian culture instead. Language is also a very painful topic in our society right now. They are very protective of their language. I think there’s this mindset now: we need to rediscover Narva because it’s a border town. It’s not good for us socially – culturally and politically – that Narva should stay isolated.

VF – At DMovies, we believe that cinema as a tool that unites people. Has Estonian cinema served as a bridge between ethnic Russian and Estonians?

HA – That’s a very good question. Estonia has always had a representation issue in cinema. We have no LGBT movies. I don’t know any Estonian film where the protagonist is LGBT. There’s a short film, but that’s it. Same thing with Russian cinema. The Russians are underrepresented in Estonian film, but this is now beginning to change. There’s a TV series called Burning Land with a Russian cast, that’s something new. It’s shot mostly in Russian language with Russian characters. Something that would never happen 10 years ago.

We still haven’t had a film that connects the two communities. We have very good distribution network for Russian cinema. All the main mainstream comedies, action and auteur films reach the screen and are very popular amongst Russians. But there hasn’t been a story that captures both sides.

VF – The movie Golden Voices (Evgeny Ruman), which is showing at your Festival in Competition this year, deals with the Russian community in Israel. Russians have their own separate video store and cinema culture. Does the same apply to Estonia?

HA – The only sign of physical segregation here is that one fifth of Tallinn’s population lives in Lasnamäe. That’s where you find the Soviet-era concrete blocks. In the heart of the city there is not such segregation, and there are no film stores and cinemas targeted exclusively at Russians. Russians films are totally mixed. However, I can say the Russians in Estonia live in the Russian mediasphere.

VF – In a bubble?

HA – I guess you could say that. That might become a political problem. Because Russian state controls all of the media. Medusa is one large news channel, and their moved their offices to Riga, in Latvia, in order to remain free of state pressure. That could be a liability.

VF – When I interviewed Tiiana Lokk last year she told me that there were 600 cinemas in Estonia at the end of the Soviet era. And that the regime encouraged Estonian culture. Maybe they weren’t that oppressive at all? Can you please talk about Estonian before and after the demise of the USSR?

HA – The Soviet Union’s position towards small countries such as Estonia, on one hand they encouraged the narrative of ethnic independence. On the other hand, there were a lot of restrictions. We couldn’t express ourselves freely. The Soviet Union still determined how Estonians could perform their identity.

The 1990s were a very interesting time because we gained our independence. We actually got cut off from the world because we were no longer part of the Soviet regime, but we weren’t integrated with the West, either. It was a a very harsh period from an economic perspective. All the cinemas closed down. In the end of the 1990s, we had less than 10 functional cinema screens in the country. But things began to change once the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival was established in 1997. We were one of the organisations that pushed for the reopening and digitalisation of cinemas. Now there are 70 or 80 cinema screens around the country.

VF – Narva has been called “the next Donbass”, and there is a lot of speculation about a possible Russian invasion. Have you encountered and hostility towards the Festival? Or could KinoFF help to build bridges and heal wounds from the past?

HA – We have never encountered hostility. We have been greeted with open arms. I was there for the opening ceremony of the Kohtla-Jarve Festival and they asked me: “Why didn’t you come sooner???”. It was a very positive message.

This Festival – along with other initiatives such as music events, musicals and operas that moved towards the East – is not going to be this magical bridge. The two communities won’t immediately extend their hand and agree peace. It’s more about giving them a selection of culture that they can consume at home. Culture is making the world a better place, as long as it’s not controlled by state propaganda.

The picture at the top of this article if from KinoFF at Kohtla-Järve. The two at the bottom are from KinoFF at Kohtla-Järve

Through Black Glass

Posted on by victorfraga

QUICK SNAP: LIVE FROM THE TALLINN BLACK NIGHTS FILM FESTIVAL

An 18-year-old blind orphan (Vasilisa Denisova) lives with other blind and partially-sighted girls in an institution in the fictional Russian town of Belodonsk. She sings in a choir in the local Orthodox church. Otherwise, her life is rather uneventful. She is very beautiful, yet profoundly timid, demure and religious. She dreams of joining the local convent. One day an unknown benefactor offers to pay for an operation that will restore her sight, in exchange for the hand in marriage. She hesitantly agree.

She travels to Germany, where she undergoes a very successful surgery. This is also where she meets her future husband Nikolai (Maksim Sukhanov), an extremely powerful oligarch. He claims royal ties and calls himself a czar. He owns his personal aeroplane and lives an spectacular estate with an army of grovelling servants. The now fully-sighted pretty young woman is overwhelmed by the vulgar and grotesque wealth. This is in contrast to the religious virtues of prudence, modesty and charity to which she was accustomed. She feels trapped, not dissimilar to the birds in a cage sitting in the middle of the gigantic lounge.

The bald-headed, ogre-looking, middle-aged man is ruthless, manipulative and paranoid (as opposed to the candid, naive and gullible female). To Nikolai, love is a piece of merchandise. He confesses that he would have returned the girl to the orphanage had the operation not been successful. He believes he’s being constantly hunted down. The house is surrounded by guards with dogs, and he’s flanked by security wherever he goes. He finds solace in his wife-to-be. He breaks down and tells her of his frailties. But he also demands sex from her. The girl rejects his advances with profound horror and abjection. She proposes a “white relationship” (companionship without sex), which infuriates the lustful man.

A few days before the wedding, Nikolai allows the girl to visit her hometown. This is when she sees the orphanage where she grew up for the first time. She also comes across a very unexpected person from the past, in an event that could seriously jeopardise her future with Nikolai. The consequences could be disastrous, yet the girl seems prepared to take the gamble.

The eighth feature film by Ukrainian filmmaker Konstantin Lopushansky, who also penned the film’s script, is an allegory of Russia, a country poisoned with oligarchy and patriarchy. Perhaps unsurprisingly images of Vladimir Putin in various colours and textures are featured prominently in the middle of the film. The Russian leader isn’t too different from Nikolai in their brutality and authoritarianism. The comparison is straightforward and clear.

The ending is fairly predictable yet perfectly effective, and the movie does justify its extensive duration of 140 minutes. However, this is not a flawless endeavour. It lacks the visual excellence of other Russian and Ukrainian director such Andrey Zvyagintsev, Sergei Loznitsa and Alexander Sokurov. The biggest problem is that the images are often so dark that both the action and the settings are hardly discernible. Even on the silver screen. Given the film title, this may have been intentional, but does still impair the viewing experience.

Through Black Glass is Showing in Competition at the 23rd Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.

Golden Voices

Posted on by victorfraga

QUICK SNAP: LIVE FROM THE TALLINN BLACK NIGHTS FILM FESTIVAL

It’s 1990. Sicty-two-year-old Raya (Maria Belkin) and her husband Victor (Vladimir Friedman) have just migrated to Israel, leaving behind their home nation and decades of dubbing foreign films into Russian for Soviet audiences. They have to grapple with a number of novel challenges: finding a job, paying rent, filling out paperwork and living with the constant fear of a chemical attack (it was of the year the First Gulf War). They also have to learn Hebrew from scratch, a language entirely foreign to the, despite their Jewish heritage.

Due to her impressive vocal skills – she can switch from one voice to another effortlessly – Raya quickly lands a well-paid job as a… telephone sex worker. She must entertain and tickle the libido of Sergey, Serge and many other lonely males at the other end of the line. Her husband – who’s blithely unaware of the real nature of his wife’s new occupation – also leverages his past work experiences. He finds work as a dubber in the video shop catering for Russian speakers. The trade is entirely illegal. Videos are captured with a hidden camera inside in the movie theatre, and Victor has to assist on every step of the operation (not just the dubbing bit).

These various pressures and changes take their toll on Raya and Victor’s marriage, and their once solid relationship begins to collapse. A brand new love grows in the most unlikely of places, but could it also blossom? Golden Voices has some ingredients an old-age romcom, yet it’s never mawkish and implausible. In fact, it’s perfectly relatable and credible – whatever your age, religion and nationality. Belkin is beyond magnificent with her large pearly eyes and expressive lips. She combines an exuberant personality with a quiet and yet assertive joie-de-vivre. She’s delicious to watch. Friedman is also very convincing as the devoted husband and cinephile.

Raya is seeking a sense of freshness and adventure, some sort of personal rebirth. She can act and sound 22 years of age whenever she wishes. There’s a real sense of tenderness in her strength. She is a fascinating artist and human being.

This 88-minute-long Israeli movie is a also a nostalgic tribute to the seventh art. Fellini is repeatedly referenced through the movie, particularly 8 1/2 (1962) and The Voice of the Moon, which was in cinemas in the year our story takes place. The movie theatre is a place for redemption and reconciliation, the final sequence reveals. Golden Voices is also a hilarious movie. The awkward sex phone sequences will have your bursting out with laughter. The movie even manages to find both humour and warmth in a possible chemical attack.

Director Evgeny Ruman and cinematographer Ziv Berkovich joined forces in order to write the fascinating screenplay based on their very own childhood experiences upon arriving in Israel in the year of 1990. Their parents worked as dubbers in the Soviet Union prior to immigration.

Golden Voices has just premiered in Competition at the 23rd Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival. A strong contender for the event’s top prize. Our editor Victor Fraga is covering the event live, as a special guest.

Space Dogs

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

For mankind to see if it could survive the perils of space exploration, it tested one of its first flights on a dog named Laika. She made it into space but was incinerated upon re-entry into the earth’s atmosphere. This is depicted in Space Dogs with a 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968) inspired level of wonder; both in its epic range and its psychedelic play of sound and colours. Yet this violent and strange beginning is only a harbinger of what’s to come: a very weird deep dive into man’s worst tendencies to man’s best friend.

This is unlike any documentary I have ever seen. Part obtuse-Angela Schanelec movie, part Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979), part Aleksey German Jr’s Under Electric Clouds (2015), it’s a fragmented, overly repetitive and narratively angular depiction of stray dogs living in Moscow intercut up with an essayistic exploration of the Soviet Space program. While not everything works — some scenes are simply too long to keep us engaged — duo Elsa Kremser and Levin Peter deserve credit for the boldness of their vision and the steadfastness of their execution.

Space Dogs

By far their biggest score is the narration by Russian veteran Aleksey Serebryakov — best known for McMafia (Hossein Amini and James Watkins, 2018-) and Leviathan (Andrey Zvyagintsev, 2014) — whose unmistakable timbre lends the film a certain authority and tragic inevitability. He recounts the legend that Laika didn’t permanently disappear but actually returned to the streets of Moscow as a ghost. Our hero in this “documentary” is also a Laika— who either is the Laika herself, a descendent of the Space Program dogs, or another dog entirely — who endlessly roams the wide avenues of Russia’s capital, finding little respite from man’s eternal cruelness.

Space Dogs often films these animals from the ground, allowing us to imagine life from their perspective. In comparison, the momentous tower blocks and orange-tinged sky of a relatively unpeopled Moscow — filmed in the dusk and dawn — creates a sense of unreality and oppression that the main Laika and its roaming gang of companions simply cannot escape. Like the best of Soviet science fiction, the concept of space travel and exploration is something of an Escher’s staircase, looping back to humanity itself, and its own seemingly unsurmountable issues.

The film debuted at the festival with a very apt content warning. If you are in anyway an animal lover, Space Dogs is a relentlessly difficult watch. Yet I felt that its very dedication to exposing man’s absolute cruelty to his kindest animals achieves a bizarre kind of moral. It’s closest comparison might actually be White Bim Black Ear (Stanislav Rostotsky, 1977), a Soviet doggy-centric take on Au Hazard Balthasar (Robert Bresson, 1966) that is even more heartrending due to its manipulation of the audience’s hopes and dreams. Yet it shares a similar theme in showing how we treat dogs — ostensible big balls of kindness — reflects back on us as a society. After all, if we cannot be kind to man’s best friend, how are we ever going to be kind to one another?

Space Dogs prompted many walkouts in my screening, meaning it may be a hard sell for distributors. Deckert Distribution have the rights, and may try have some success in the arthouse circuit.

Available on Mubi is September.

Once in Trubchevsk (Odnazhdy v Trubchevske)

Posted on by victorfraga

QUICK SNAP: LIVE FROM CANNES

The town of Trubchevsk is located in the Bryansk Oblast of Russia, not far from the Ukrainian border. Life is quite uneventful for a lorry driver (Egor Barinov), his wife Tamara (Maria Semyonova) and their teenage son Vytia. Tamara does the housework, Vytia plays videogames and the lorry driver (his name is never revealed) provides for the family with his vehicle. Until he starts seeing a woman called Anna (Kristina Shnaider), whom he picks up daily somewhere along the motorway.

Their affair isn’t exceptionally torrid, at least not if you are familiar with Almodovar’s or Francois Ozon’s filmography. Yet the mere existence of an extramarital relation is enough to rock the quiet little town. Anna too has a family, including a child daughter. Her husband Yura (Yury Kisylyov) is devastated upon finding out about her dalliance. He thought that she was in Moscow selling the scarves and dresses that she knits. He begs her to stay, but she eventually moves in with the lorry. Anna’s mother-in-law disseminates the news, which spread like wildfire and quickly reach Tamara. The lorry driver begs his wife not to leave him, and begins to lead a double life with both women. But that isn’t sustainable, and sooner or later he will have to make a decision.

Anna and Tamara are far more liberated than the lorry driver and Yura. The women are prepared to start a new life, while the men are profoundly scared of change, and of making difficult decisions. Perhaps this a subtle feminist statement, in a country where feminist memes can land you in jail, but not domestic violence. Or perhaps not. Maybe the females too could should abide to the long-established social norms. The writing is on the wall: don’t go chasing waterfalls, stick to the river and the lakes you’re used to.

The film takes place during the celebrations of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Bryansk Oblast from the Nazis at the end of WW2. The town is vibrant with festivities. Ultimately, this is a film about the refusal to move on. Russia is a very conservative society, not very good at embracing change. And very nostalgic about the past. The country repudiates sudden and abrupt change, both within the heart of the family and the political establishment.

There are a couple of interesting moments in the movie. They include Anna doing a sexy dance for the lorry driver to the sound of Flamenco-sounding Russian pop music, and an adorable old lady reminiscing about WW2, when she sheltered and saved a partisan from an almost certain death in the hands of the Germans. Overall, however, Once in Trubchevsky is mostly languid and plain.

Once in Trubchevsk is showing in the 72nd Cannes International Film Festival as part of the Un Certain Regard section. The director introduced the film describing the selection of her movie as “a miracle”. Which is probably true for a Russian female director, in a country where the film industry is largely dominated by male directors. I don’t recall seeing a Russian film made by a female director in a large European film festival. The film in itself, however, isn’t particularly miraculous. Unlikely to make it beyond the festival circuit.

A Gentle Creature (Krotkaya)

Posted on by victorfraga

This is the side of Russia Putin doesn’t want you to see. There are no monumental buildings, no glittering cathedrals, no military show-off, no glitz and glam whatsoever. Instead you will see derelict buildings, dirty roads, poverty and corruption of every conceivable type imaginable: of the establishment, of the individual and of the soul. Of the Russian soul.

A beautiful and unnamed woman (Vasilina Makovtseeva, pictured above) receives the parcel that she sent to her husband in prison, but she’s not given a reason why the item has been returned. She sets off to the prison in search for an explanation as to what’s happened to her spouse, but she just keep hitting metaphorical brick walls along her way. Along her journey she encounters pimps, hookers, crooks, villains, racketeers and swindlers. Mostly people with a rotten soul, with no sense of kindness and solidarity. They don’t smile, don’t make eye contact and they only act in their own self-interest. The police and the prison officials are the most objectionable characters, extremely rude and brutal.

According to Dostoevsky, “the most basic, most rudimentary spiritual need of the Russian people is the need for suffering, ever-present and unquenchable, everywhere and in everything”. There’s plenty of suffering in A Gentle Creature. But he also talks of depth and compassion, and the people whom the woman meets are completely devoid of such sentiments. A Gentle Creature is about the search for kindness in a country that has no time for sentimentality; this is the collapse of the Russian soul.

The fact that the woman and her husband are never named is symbolic of a nation that has stripped its citizens from their individuality. Instead her husband is known by a very long number that’s impossible to memorise. This is very common in Russia, a country where many schools and airports have numbers instead of names, and where bureaucracy is such that citizens are forced to carry a passport even when they travel internally. The town and the region where the story take place are never named either.

In the most beautiful moment of the movie, the woman is ridden to see her husband on a bizarre police rickshaw, to the sound of the Russian song “By the Long Road” (which you may recognise in the voice of Mary Hopkins “Those Were the Days” or Dalida’s “Les Temps des Fleurs”). Will she finally find out what happened to him? Was it all just a bad dream?

The photography of A Gentle Creature is breathtaking, in a very dirty way. There’s a misty and ethereal quality, which combined with the crumbling and yet inhabited buildings may remind you vaguely of Tarkovsky. The film wraps up with a vivid nightmare of the failure of Russia, thereby highlighting the enthusiastic complicity of its citizens in the process.

A Gentle Creature showed at the 70th Cannes International Film Festival, when this piece was originally written. It received a long ovation from critics, but there were also a few boos. I can only assume that the disapproval came from disgruntled Russians expressing their indignation regarding the negative portrayal of their country. This is indeed a very good piece of filmmaking.

It is out in UK cinemas on Friday, April 13th. It’s available on all major VoD platforms from December 3rd!

Loveless (Nelyubov)

Posted on by victorfraga

Mother Russia has failed her children. It has neglected and relegated them to a life without hope and love. The latest movie by Andrey Zvyagintsev, possibly the biggest exponent in Russia cinema right now, is a bleak allegory of life in Russia. People carry on with their existences in a robotic and dehumanised fashion, without any regard for their neighbours, family and other citizens. Not even their own offspring. Yet, who’s to blame them? They are too busy searching for a purpose and a solution for their very own loveless predicament.

Zhenya (Mariana Spivak) is estranged from her husband Boris (Alexey Rozin), and they are now seeking a divorce. She’s very busy with her newly-found wealthy affair, while he is catering for his heavily pregnant new girlfriend. Their son Alexey (Matvey Novikov) feels entirely ignored, and his lack of friends and anhedonic life are obviously a reflection of the no-love and attention that he receives from his parents. The situation is remarkably similar to the Angela’s in Fassbinder’s Chinese Roulette (1976), who blames her disability on her parents ,who are too busy with their respective lovers. The difference is that the German girl creates a trap for her folks, while the Russian boy simply vanishes without leaving a trace.

Some of the moments in the film will leave you astonished. The fear on Alexey’s face hiding behind the bathroom door while Zhenya henpecks and abuses her husband would make Edvard Munch jealous. And Zhenya’s description of motherhood and hate for her own son is shocking. She despises him for nearly cleaving her in twain at birth, and she simply cannot stand his very sight.

It is no exaggeration to claim that Loveless is a metaphor of a failed Mother Russia. Andrey Zvyagintsev has dotted the film with political reports coming from the radio, conveniently reminding viewers that our private life is an extension of the public sphere. This is a film about the failure of the traditional nuclear family, and Russia’s failure to accept such changes. Divorce can lead to joblessness. Gay marriage can… well, let’s not even go there (Zvyagintsev didn’t).

The Russian state is also collapsing. There’s talk of social apocalypse. Boris and Zhenya have to deal with a incompetent police unprepared to support them in their search for their son. The subject of failed government institutions is a recurring theme in Zvyagintsev’s films, particularly in the superb Leviathan (2014).

Loveless is a gripping and disturbing film, but it’s not a perfect one. It lacks the lyrical excellence of Leviathan, and it feels a little too long at 120 minutes. The second half of the film doesn’t have the emotional depth of the first half, focusing too much on the search efforts to locate Alexey. On the other hand, the ending of the film is very powerful, and it will leave a bitter taste of ambiguity in your mouth. Fassbinder ended Chinese Roulette with a gunshot, without revealing who the victim was. Zvyagintsev wraps up Loveless with a scream, but I can’t reveal what the ambiguous event is without spoiling the film. You will just have to wait a few months when the film comes to a cinema near you and see.

The Russian film title Нелюбов is a made-up word meaning “no-love”, just like Serge Gainsbourg’s song L’Anamour (also a made-up word meaning “no-love”). Perhaps the French and the Russian Soul have more in common than previously thought.

The movie probably deserves a higher rating, as this is a dirty film guaranteed to haunt you for a long time. The problem is that Andrey Zvyagintsev set the bar so high with Leviathan, that I felt compelled to give Loveless a lower mark. This is one of the problems with being a film genius!

Loveless showed at the last Cannes Film Festival, when this piece was originally written. It then won the BFI London Film festival in October. It is out in UK cinemas on February 9th (2018) and on all major VoD platforms in June.

Zoology (Zoologiya)

Posted on by victorfraga

At first sight, there is nothing unusual about middle-aged Natasha (Natalya Pavlekova). She lives with her mother and her cat, and leads an ordinary existence working as a food procurement officer in a zoo, where she gets bullied by her colleagues. She does however have one remarkable and very distinguised feature: she inexplicably grows a tale.

Natasha has full control over her odd member, being able and wag or wail it at her convenience. But she decides to conceal it instead from everyone except her doctors, probably vouching for both her apparent normality and – perhaps more significantly – her security. There are rumours in town that a woman possessed by the devil has a tail and she can kill or curse anyone she comes in contact with, or even simply by making eye contact. Even Natasha’a mother – unaware of her daughter’s abnormality – is scared of the evil-stricken woman.

Russians are very intolerant of anyone who doesn’t fit the norm, it’s clear in the film. Russia doesn make efforts to integrate foreigners, drug users and homosexuals into their society, instead shunning and marginalising them. Of course it couldn’t be any different for a woman with a tail. Zoology is a comment on country unprepared or unwilling to embrace change. They see the different as being foreign or too modern, and they dismiss it in favour of nostalgia of the old times. An elderly lady in hospital longs for old-fashioned doctors who examine patients with a hammer, while another ones blames her woes on “the madness of Europe”. To these people, Russia should stay immaculate and pristine, chained to its past. There is no room for anything subversive.

Zoology is also a very dark and twisted comedy, like nothing you’ve seen before. Natasha starts a relationship with the young radiologist Peter, and the romance soon turns very naughty. Natasha gives a whole new meaning to “bending over” and “shaking that booty”. And Peter is very keen to explore Natasha’s tail in ways she probably didn’t imagine before. The result is a film very effective in the realism and simplicity with which it handles absurdity.

The film is set in a small coastal in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, the region of the Ukraine recently annexed by Russia, but such annexation is not recognised by the large majority of countries around the world. This is the ultimate geographic metaphor transposed on the human body. Just like Russians are not ready to accept Natasha’s unusual physical outgrowth, the world is unwilling to recognise Russia’s own geographic outgrowth. Oh, the irony of cinema!

Zoology was part of the BFI London Film Festival in 2016, when this piece was originally written. The film was made available on BFI Player in September 2017.