Dictatorship of kept women

Konstantin Bogomolov as an accuser of the morals of secular Moscow

The series "Kept Women" by Konstantin Bogomolov was washed by waves of delight even at the level of announcements. It seemed that the video service of exclusive online premieres, Start, could not believe its own happiness: the “great creator and innovator” agreed to make a film about the tough morals of secular Moscow. The entire film is not yet available, but there are already reasons for talking.

The morals of secular capitals are an interesting topic. They have not changed much since the days of Balzac and Zola. The Civil War in Russia had not yet died down, and Chukovsky wrote in his diary for 1921: “Moscow now lives below the diaphragm: a gastro-sexual life. Women have thick lips, drunken eyes, everyone talks about entertainment ... ”This phrase is the essence of the Keeped Women series.

The erotic thriller begins, as it should be, with a murder. Saratov art critic Dasha comes to visit her friend Marina, the mistress of a wealthy official. Dasha dreams of following in her friend's footsteps, but Marina is unexpectedly killed. It is impossible to retell the plot due to the diversity of the "gastric and sexual life." The abundance of actors, like intercourse, is difficult to count - everyone sleeps with everyone else.

This seems to be the main object of pride of the director. He believes that there is little sex in Russian cinema, and he managed, I quote, "even to make some kind of breakthrough in this regard."

It is a pity that the number of sex scenes does not grow into quality. Passion does not show the characters. Moreover, everything else does not show them in the realm of cardboard and plywood. Particularly surprising are the dialogues revolving around the theme of "chicks in search of the meaning of life." They seem to be written by underachieving students of the Literary Institute. Something strange happens to good actors as well. Daria Moroz is able to ennoble even the "House with Lilies", but she failed to breathe life into her investigator of the criminal investigation department. In order to keep up with the others, the investigator has intercourse with a colleague in an official car - on the way to the corpse. In this scene, one could see at least some irony, if not for the brutal seriousness of law enforcement officers.

In the series, the context is clearly more important than the text. Without knowledge of secular regalia, much is difficult to understand. There are many active salon lionesses and lions here - from Nadezhda Obolentseva to Mikhail Druyan. The same Moroz is Bogomolov's ex-wife. Art critic Dasha is played by Sophia Ernst. The role of the murdered Marina is given to Maria Fomina, who has a connection with the offspring of high-profile surnames. She was a friend of Pavel Tabakov, then became the wife of Alexei Kiselev (son of Evgeny Alekseevich). Well, and so on - on the list. Only Olga Sutulova, in the role of a secular matchmaker, managed to develop her character to a vivid image.

I'll interrupt myself, back to the announcement of "Kept Women". I receive a lot of notifications about upcoming premieres in my mail, but only the one about which it was a policy document. It turns out that the producers of the series quite consciously, “breaking the rules, in spite of all the textbooks on screenwriting”, gave complete freedom to the Artist in order to avoid clichés and stereotypes.

A separate question is whether these gullible people feel deceived. The fact of the matter is that in the film there is no experiment, no innovation, no - oh horror! - provocations. The plot, and he weaves a dull pigtail, like in sitcoms. If it weren’t for abundant sex and a rare obscenity, this would be a classic production of the Rossiya channel. It is one thing to confuse Marshak with John the Theologian or Dostoevsky with Leps, and quite another to dive into naked realism, where intelligibility of the statement is necessary. Then Bogomolov just rushed along the beaten path.

The lack of a regular political life today's high-quality series, from "Cheers" to "An Ordinary Woman", more than make up for sexual life.

I will say a very seditious thing: Bogomolov is not the discoverer of the topic. The original Russian capitalism has long brought out a breed of women united by the archaic word "kept women". The first layer of the breed was made up of ladies who rushed to Moscow from all the cracks of the collapsed empire for the purpose of barter: young and not very bodies were exchanged for monetized benefits of gas or oil origin. The second layer is girls from noble families and individual artistic natures, whose high-profile scandals sold better than modest achievements. The first monument of this subculture - the series "Bitches", is interesting only for its prototypes. They were recent (then, back in 2004) girlfriends Volochkova and Sobchak, who did not share a rich admirer.

Ksenia Anatolyevna is the connecting thread of times. In Bogomolov's film, she is also present, but not as a prototype, but in her own capacity. She is present in the life of the director. The love triangle (or its imitation) Bogomolov-Sobchak-Vitorgan generously consecrated the TV with his throwing. The triangle activated on the eve of a number of premieres (of course, quite by accident). In an atmosphere of loud hype, Bogomolov is releasing a series, Sobchak is releasing a new show, and Vitorgan is staging a play for the first time. No one is for nothing, except perhaps the spectator. He has long been nauseated by the whirlpool of passions against the backdrop of the author's cold rationality.