Translated material
Ours in Venice
Bear courses
"Bear Kiss", dir. Sergey Bodrov Sr.
The main competition program
World Premiere - September 4
After the dramatic story of the powerful "new Russian" in America Quickie ("Let's do it quickly") Sergey Bodrov Sr. returns with the romantic tragicomedy "Bear Kiss." The general in two films is perhaps only the presence of Sergey Bodrov Jr. and participation in class A festivals: after Moscow-Venice.
In June 2001, a big noise rose due to the total absence of Russian films in the competition program of the Moscow Film Festival. As it turned out a little later, Sergey Bodrov Sr. was called to stand up for the honor of his homeland: his film Quickie officially represented Germany and was shot in the United States, but Russian actors (Vladimir Mashkov and Sergey Bodrov) and, more importantly, the director still allowed us to root for this picture. Now the situation is repeated with a "bear kiss." In the captors of the film, Russian company "STV" and producer Sergei Selvanov are mentioned by the latter - after a number of the largest European production firms, however, we can well be considered Russian.
From our country in the "bear kiss" in the very first shots taken in St. Petersburg, Alexander Bashirov is present (it is funny to note: the audience just observed him in the first seconds of the film by Kira Muratova "Chekhovo Motes", and again the participation of the actor was limited to several moments). Later, by the middle of the film, Bodrov appears on the screen and no longer leaves it. Bashirov sells the main characters of the film, circus artists, a teddy bear from a zoo. Bodrov plays the very bear cub, miraculously becoming a man. Starting in St. Petersburg, the film ends in Siberia; His last characters are Russian border guards. In addition, the Russian tamer worked with the bears (but how else), and the most talented of the Russian young animators Mikhail Aldashin ("Bukashka") painted on popular screensavens and credits.
However, this is not so important. After all, the screenwriter of the film is the famous American Terrence Malik (director of the sensational "thin red line"), the operator - the Mexican Javier Perez, who was filming "Night until night." The role of the sad clown was played by the German Joachim Krol, who starred in three films of Tom Teakver, and gave the central role of Bodrov to the Swedish girl Rebecca Lilieberg, who received international fame after the role of the Lesbian schoolgirl in “Show me love” Lucas Mudisson. The most significant in this truly stellar project is a very Russian pathos and plot: the uncompromising love of a beauty for the monster.
The "bear kiss" dates back to the rich tradition of films about werewolf bears, of which he is closest to the "ordinary miracle." Let's make a reservation: not to the emphasized theater television film, Mark Zakharov, which is not at all like a large-scale full-scale film-travele of Bodrov Sr., but to the play of Evgeny Schwartz. The main character, Lola, is a typical princess, albeit a circus. Her beloved Bear Misha after a series of ritual actions (including and kiss) turns into a person played surprisingly organic as an animal of vigor. So the Zoofil plot in fact turns out to be a chaste romantic fairy tale for older school children with an inevitable happy end. The unconditional pluses of the "bear kiss" include the choice of nature and camera work, as well as the temporary and spatial convention of the international script. Maybe that is why it is now difficult to predict both the festival and the audience fate of the picture: one can hope for the fact that the European public will appreciate the composition of the actors, coupled with Siberian and circus exoticism.
The law is not written to fools
"House of fools", dir. Andrey Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky
The main competition program
World Premiere - September 2
The new picture of Andrei Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky is the first in the last eight years (after the “chicken of the hazel”). The script of the "House of Fools" is about the same, but, according to the director, it is impossible to consider it outdated. If only because Konchalovsky tried to tell the history of universal, placed, however, in specific historical scenery.
To participate in international festivals-and to the victories on them-Andrei Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky is not used to. But for films shot on Russian material with Russian actors, each time you have to get used to it again after a long break - as this time. It is partly paradoxical that the film intended for the Russian public will be the first to see the guests of the Venice festival, and the date of the Russian premiere of the "House of Fools" has not yet been determined. However, you can’t change anything in this: so far the director’s compatriots will have to be content with critical reviews for his new film.
"House of Fools" is the story of one psychiatric hospital on the border of Russia and Chechnya. The war began, the staff escaped, the crazy people remained left to themselves. Then Chechen militants came to the house of fools, and involuntarily a peaceful hospital turned into an arena of military operations. The main character of this story is played by the young actress Julia Vysotskaya (part -time - the director’s wife). Jeanne is in love with Brian Adams - for filming an episode in which the heroine dreams of her idol, the singer himself came to Moscow - and therefore does not notice the courtship of neighbors in the hospital. In order to join the role, Vysotskaya spent two months in a special dispensary. By the way, real patients were shot as actors in the picture, and Chechen students played militants. Well, the so -called stars - except for the notorious Adams - in the "House of Fools" are not too many: unless Evgeny Mironov, who played an important but not central role. But for the first time in one of the main roles in the cinema, Comrade Vyacheslav Polunin was starred in the clown workshop of Mimea Stanislav Varka (so far, however, playing with Herman and Ovcharov, who was Ivanushka-Durachk in the show to the 850th anniversary of Moscow, staged on the Vasilyevsky descent of Konchalovsky).
The director believes that the theme of “flight over the cuckoo’s nest” and “chambers No. 6” can never become obsolete now fashionable and constantly remembered by filmmakers. As for the war, it seems important to Konchalovsky only as a situation in which the characters of his heroes can appear from an unexpected side. Only those who watch the film will be able to check how unexpected this side is really unexpected. In Russia, no one has seen it in final form.
The river flows, but not the Volga
"River", dir. Alexey Balabanov
The program "New Territories"
World Premiere - September 6
All the river passages that have seen, converge that she could become the best film by Alexei Balabanov. But this film did not work out for objective tragic reasons: in the disaster, the main role of Tuyar Svinoboeva died in the disaster. The fifty -minute option, mounted by the director, will be the first to see the audience of the Venetian festival, and almost immediately the "river" will be released in Russia on the video.
One of the original modern Russian directors Alexei Balabanov from a certain point shoots films in a checkerboard pattern, alternating purely commercial projects with purely non -profit. So, after the "brother" appeared "about freaks and people," and after the "brother-2" and before the "war" the "river" was supposed to appear. But the film, which Balabanov shot in Yakutia based on the novel by the Polish writer Vaclav Serasshevsky, was never finished. More than a year after the end of the filming, the director decided to assemble the material together, with a sailor retelling and not shot fragments. The resulting version resulting as a result is an impressive spectacle.
In his love for the marginal areas of culture and public life, Balabanov was recognized in the sensational "about freaks and people." The heroes of the "river" live in an era close to the time of the action of that film, namely at the end of the nineteenth century. However, they exist outside of time: this is the life of a small colony of leaked in Yakutia. Time is replaced by a space - a river, on the shore of which great passions are performed: love, betrayal, revenge, murder, atonement, and all this is on the material of the life of several people, and some of them are not even able to rise from wretched beds. Children, old people, men, women. A love triangle - an uninhabited woman who came to the colony fell in love with the patient and became pregnant from him, after which his wife came out onto the stage. The gloomy scale of the figure of the central heroine of the film, Mergeni, in the final is visualized in a powerful eating of a fire by the river, and the philosophical-medical recent frames send the enlightened viewer to the Dzharmushevsky "dead". The “river”, deceptively seeming an ethnographic study, could become the most original film not only in Balabanov’s creative biography, but also in the entire recent history of Russian cinema. But we repeat: this film is not. There are only fifty minutes of magical screen time called the "river".
Wise air snakes
"Serpent", dir. Alexey Muradov
Criticism Week program, debut competition
World Premiere - September 3
"Snake" is the film debutant Alexei Muradov, a student of Alexei German. This picture almost got into Berlin, then in Cannes, in order to end up in Venice. The picture received a special prize in Sochi at the Kinotavr festival, and then was shown outside the competition in Vyborg. This is a picture of the everyday life of the Russian executioner.
The hero of this slow film, shot through a haze, provincial haze, lives a monotonous life: in the morning breaks up, quarreling with his wife, then wakes up a disabled son and helps him to do exercises, after which he goes to work. His work is not too complicated. He signed in the magazine, received a gun, went to the basement, shot the back of the next sentenced to death. And when the work is finished, he comes home to launch an air snake with his son - there are no other joys. Each penny earned is postponed for an operation, which, most likely, will not take place.
“Snake” is a typical festival cinema, and therefore it is not entirely clear what category of a wide viewer it can be addressed: there are no doubts in future delights, and it was not for nothing that the picture was included in the “Week of Critics”. A deliberately blurred image, a built frame, a carefully selected sound path - these are all unconditional advantages in which the German school is felt. The disadvantages, alas, are no less obvious: serious intonation makes the film monotonous. The picture lasting fifteen for an hour is less allowed to bore the viewer than some two-hour epic. Some elements of the artistic system "Snake" look just superfluous - such as the orders of a mission sentenced to death or the final episode with a sudden a cinema mechanic. If the "snake" was a short -term for fifteen minutes, he would only benefit from this. But one way or another, the phenomenon in our cinema of such a film, capable of competing with copyright cinema around the world at the largest festival, makes the honor to both director Muradov and his producers.
Stewardesses fall into heaven
"Heaven. Aircraft. Girl", dir. Vera Storozheva
Program "New Territories", debut competition
World Premiere - September 2
"Heaven. Aircraft. Girl" - directorial debut of faith by the guard and producer debut of Renata Litvinova. In addition, Litvinova wrote the script of the picture (based on the play by Edward Radzinsky, “104 pages about love” and the film by George Natanson “Once again about love”) and played the main role in it. The story of the stewardess in love, oddly enough, does not look old -fashioned and more than thirty years after the first incarnation on the film screen.
The former heroine of the films of Kira Muratova Renata Litvinova wants to make a movie that the public likes. Hence, probably, the decision to turn from the actress and screenwriter into the producer. In the new film with the poetic name "Heaven. Airplane. Girl" she is one in three faces, but the main one is the screen. The naive stewardess played by Tatyana Doronina, performed by Litvinova, seems like a character from someone's hallucinogenic sleep. The specific manner of behavior and speech, intentionally and consciously full of Litvinova, found the most organic expression in the new picture. The remaining heroes of the film constantly blame her - they say, she is crazy ("crazy", corrects their stewardess) and speaks strangely, and behaves incomprehensible. But this, probably, is the only way to talk among the young shoots of the clip and impudent ours of our-novovo-kino “once again about love”, naively affect the eternal motive.
In the 1968 film, the beloved stewardess, spoiled by the success of the wise guy, in the new picture turned into almost anti -hero, and externally, and the behavior of the time of "600 seconds" clearly reminiscent of Alexander Nevzorov. However, all the more expressive heroine Litvinova with an ugly (as she herself believes) is the name of Lara, who at first who was repeating as a spell seemed to have lost the meaning of the word “I love you”, “I love you”, and then completely turning into a romantic messenger of heaven, dying in unearthly fire. The main advantage of the film is a combination of exquisite, in terms of color and composition, visual solution with the extreme simplicity of dialogs. In short, the movie is about love. Again.
Our sister in Sweden
'Lily 4-Ever', dir. Lucas Mudisson (Sweden)
Contest 'against the current
World Premiere - August 30
Oksana Akinshina became the star of Russian cinema about a year and a half ago-with the release of the film by Sergey Bodrov Jr.'s sister, where she played a major role. It is no coincidence that this film was invited last year to participate in the second competition program of the Venetian festival; There, probably, Oksana was noticed by Europeans. Now this fifteen -year -old girl managed to star in several paintings, among which, the obviously fashionable directorial debut of Philip Yankovsky 'in the movement.' But more important than the episodic role in this film - the central in the picture of the young, but already famous on the international scale of the Swedish director Lucas Mudisson. The breakthrough of this Swede on the world film market took place in 1998 with a film about desperate girlish love 'Show me love', and then was fixed by the film about the hippie commune 'together. The new work of Mudisson is called 'Lily 4-Ever' (that is, 'Lily Forever'), and in her Akinshina played the role of a girl from the USSR, which a new acquaintance invites to start a happy life in Sweden ... As you might easily guess, nothing good came of it. Details - after the Venetian premiere; So far, it is only possible to state that the Swedish press in his reviews unanimously repeats about the bright talent of the young Russian actress.
08/29/2002 / Anton Dolin