Friends among strangers

Russian paintings in the MIFF competition

Well, there is no way for the Moscow festival to be truly international. Even the special introductory program of Russian premieres, held at the House of Cinema with a full house, is crowded mainly by Russian viewers, as if these films will not appear in theaters soon. So the unexpected refusal of the producer of the film “Vise” Leonid Yarmolnik to show his film as part of this program caused a disproportionately loud scandal. But this is what always happens in the Russian cinematic kitchen - fights and altercations can be heard there louder than the smells of the brew, that is, of that very movie.

However, it is the new Russian cinema presented at the festival that is quite interesting. Moreover, there is more of it than ever before. Only in the competition are three Russian films, plus a Georgian and Ukrainian filmed with Russian actors and in Russian, plus the Israeli “Children of the USSR”, shot by an emigrant director... Two films out of three Russian ones have already been shown, and the audience that is occupied only “ours” may well believe that the golden key is in our pocket.

In my opinion, Vera Storozheva’s film “Travel with Pets” is still in the lead. Watchdog, which became famous after the film “Sky. Airplane. The Girl,” from which everyone first remembered her, member of the current jury Renata Litvinova, made a gentle, subtle and intelligent film, in which she discovered for cinema a wonderful theater actress, not spoiled by leading roles, Ksenia Kutepova.

The story of a woman suddenly given freedom after the death of her husband could have been just another feminist cry, but it turned out to be a tender poem about fragile beauty and finding harmony. The beautiful actress, with her slightly boyish grace, is surprisingly chaste and reserved, and thanks to her, the trivial becomes natural again. Kutepova’s partner was Dmitry Dyuzhev, a new playboy of Russian cinema, whom Storozheva seemed to be rediscovering - so naive, simple and charming was his hero, a truck driver who suddenly fell in love with a fresh widow. And the most interesting thing is that despite the resemblance to the famous “Switchman”, the white dresses with veils, the goat and the cow, there is no mannerisms in the film. Shot by Oleg Lukichev, as if on purpose, a little lighter than the norm, the film turned out to be really light and airy, light, like its main actress, sailing in the finale on her boat through some unrealistically beautiful Russian expanses and promising hope - that everything is in the end It will end well in the end.

Valery Ogorodnikov’s film “Putin” also ends with a panorama of an island in the middle of a large lake. If we ignore the strangeness of the participation in the MIFF competition of a film shot by a director who died a year ago and completed without his direct participation, and treat the film not as a tribute to memory, but as a topical statement, then it turns out that the Russian cinema chosen for the competition was the one where the desire for positivity has become organic.

“Putina” is a story about a northern fishing island, all the inhabitants of which are a little strange, but nice people, eccentric, but harmless. This film has already been compared to the paintings of Kusturica, but if the Balkan villagers are cheerful and vital, the Pskov fishermen seem a little unreal and ephemeral, like sylphs from Russian ballets. Their feelings are cool and slow, despite the fatal love triangle: on the island everyone is preparing for the wedding, anticipating a cheerful and exuberant holiday, driving into the subconscious an insoluble problem - although the bride loves another, moreover, she is expecting a child from him, she is marrying a good guy who suits her better in every way. But on the eve of the wedding, the other one arrives on the island. He is played by Peter Semak, a theater actor of great caliber, who has just played Lear in Lev Dodin, and, it seems, is too big for the role of a drunkard fisherman who sinned with a young child.

And yet, this autumn, apple-fish confusion has its own charm and beauty, some unexpected, poignant echo in these musicians, in the dashing and dirty “Zaporozhets” with a white ball beating in the wind, in these streets and barns. How doomedly they wait for a holiday that will never take place, how confident they are that everything will get better, everything will come, nothing is completely destroyed and somehow it will stick together and grow together. In these spells of fate, in the naive belief that its inevitability only seems to us, there is something childish and simple-minded, which gives the film a peculiar persistent aftertaste of autumn apples

The Ukrainian participant in the competition program, the film “By the River,” filmed by the young director Eva Neumann with the support of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of Ukraine and the Ukrainian Misto-Bank headed by Ivan Fursin, was also perceived as “our own.” Interest in this film, shot at the Odessa Film Studio, which is being renovated today, was fueled by the information that its director worked for Kira Muratova. Moreover, the co-author of the script is Sergei Chetvertkov, and among the actors are Sergei Bekhterev and Natalya Buzko.

Of course, there are traces of Muratov’s influence in the film (and, obviously, this is inevitable for everyone who came into close contact with this incredibly talented and unique person), but there are also differences that allow us to believe in the emergence of a new directorial talent in Ukraine.

“By the River” is based on the stories of Friedrich Gorinshtein, and stars Nina Ruslanova and Maria Politsemako. Between these two wonderful actresses the main theme is played out - the complex relationship between an elderly daughter and an elderly mother, two lonely, loving, but also tired of each other, women whose every day of life is similar to the other. But then one day they decide to go for a walk to the river... Or rather, the eldest of the women insists on it - taking advantage of the unexpected visit of a young functionary who came on behalf of “your candidate” with the promise of compensation for once confiscated property. The eldest lady is generally a much more risky and active lady, the only trouble is that by the age of ninety she had lost her mind a little, she confuses people and events, but she now has wonderful freedom to fulfill her desires. “Eh, Mashka,” she says dreamily to her daughter, “if only I were young like you!” And it is the mother who initiates all the madness of this day: visiting a restaurant, going on a boat...

Maria Polizeimako accurately reproduces the physical behavior of the already frail, but quite cheerful old woman, and only her eyes betray the discrepancy between the ages of the heroine and the performer. Nina Ruslanova, who plays the daughter, accompanies her perfectly. Her grumbling caution and suspiciousness, eternal shame for her mother’s escapades, the harshness of intonations in their dialogues and uncertain seekfulness in communicating with strangers are wonderful details of this film, generous in details. Perhaps the director did not quite succeed in combining several plots into a single whole. The individual stories are united only by the location of the action - a river flowing along a city park, where provincial dilapidation and abandonment create precisely the space among which this state of loneliness and at the same time tenderness for each other, which distinguishes all the characters, even the most, it seemed, is especially appropriate would be random. A world where everything was in the past and where everything today seems to be dusted with the pollen of memories, the director was no less successful than the partnership of two actresses, and the ability to convey it sensually and emotionally is precisely the quality that allows one to assume in the debutante the promise of a bright and independent artistic destiny.

“By the River” has already participated in one of the out-of-competition programs at the Rotterdam Festival, where, according to Eva Neumann, it was received “surprisingly well - just with a bang,” due to the fact that “it is in tune with the needs of today’s European audience.”

In Moscow, he fit perfectly into the new style of Russian festival films - soft, lyrical, picturesque - corresponding to the needs of the new Russian audience... or the tastes of the selectors of the 29th MIFF.

Alena Solntseva