At the Kinoshock Festival in Anapa I watched a very decent, especially if measured against the average level of made-for-TV productions, film by the excellent director Marina Lyubakova, "Opasnaya Svyaz" ("Dangerous Liaison"), a noir with a touch of satirizing of the nouveaux riches. First one, than another husband of the femme fatale - their loving fervour diminished as their grasp on business grew - watched the same TV program where lions, elephants and other rhinos copulated before going to sleep. However, this sight made no difference whatsoever to their potency or desire. Well, in October you could easily get the feeling that all the main TV channels are transmitting the same "In the Animal World" program. It could, however, go under any name, even "Facing the City" or "Time." For a week the main event in the news – first the regular editions and then the final wrap-ups – was the presenting to journalists of an Amur tiger cub that had been given to Vladimir Putin. The spectators could think devil knows what thoughts if they remembered that recently the Prime Minister was kissing an Amur tigress in the Far Eastern taiga. However, the news bulletins failed to mention that the journalists who were summoned to the PM without being told why had to wait in his anteroom for four and a half hours: from 8 p.m. till 12.30 a.m. They were constantly told that Putin was at a government meeting dedicated to the crisis and would arrive shortly. When he finally did arrive the journalists were already absolutely sure that they are about to find out about the Prime Minister's resignation. Well, what else could justify such mystery, such suspense. Only a tiger cub. As the Russian crisis, which, unlike the worldwide one, is not to be mentioned on the central channels, grew, so did the animal element in the news. Two weeks later the tiger cub was replaced by Koni the labrador. Sergei Ivanov gave the dog a collar equipped with the satellite navigation system GLONASS. The dog hasn't shown any particular enthusiasm but getting a gift of a collar is after all better than being given to the tiger cub which lives in the same house. I remember though that after the end of the war with Georgia the military experts bemoaned the lack of GLONASS system in the army which could've been very useful there. The generals wouldn't be catching stray bullets sitting on a tank in front of an advancing column, and the strategic bombers used for the wrong purpose wouldn't be shot down by the anti-aircraft fire. Finally, the hour of the horse came. On Channel Five almost top among the experts who evaluated the results of Ms. Matviyenko's first five years as a governor was the horse-breeding and equestrian sports authority that is Alexander Nevzorov. He referred to her as a "fantastically pure and disinterested governor." Mr. Nevzorov hasn't spoken much about politics over the last few years, if at all. But the secret of his appearance on a political show is easily explained. I remember that at the beginning of her term as a governor Ms. Matviyenko referred to herself as a "workhorse." So Mr. Nevzorov didn't betray his equestrian calling which takes up a lion's share of his time. The opposition, meanwhile, has finally exposed itself as the haters of all living things on the land and in the water. An activist of the St. Petersburg United Civil Front just boarded a train in Astrakhan where she was preparing an opposition congress when the Ministry of the Interior workers on the transport have unerringly identified her, held her and found a can of black caviar during a search. The illegal item was given to her by one of the comrades-in-arms. Some three years ago Putin, then a mere president, kissed an Astrakhan sturgeon as tenderly as he kissed a tigress. Sergei Ivanov then gave the sturgeon, well, not a GLONASS, of course, but something just as fancy which permitted it to be located at any moment. A scary thought: the opposition activists could've stolen and disemboweled the Putin-kissed fish for its caviar. This looks like a terrorist conspiracy.

Film reviews by Mikhail Trofimenkov

Admiral
Russia, 2008
Directed by Andrei Kravchuk
Starring Konstantin Khabenskiy, Yelizaveta Boyarskaya, Yegor Beroyev, Sergei Bezrukov
*
The producers have sincerely (cynically) confessed that they released a half-finished product, a clip digest of a ten-hours long TV series. The idea is that you check out the complete version and you'd get the whole (motion) picture. But THIS cannot be redeemed. The filmmakers' most mortal sin is that they have for some reason rewrote the ready-made screenplay that is the outstanding, real history of Admiral Kolchak and his lover Anna Timireva who paid for her love with 37 years of prison and exile. In the film Anna surfaces in "white" Omsk in November 1918, humbly works as a nurse, and only in December 1919 gets to meet Kolchak with whom she had for three years had a platonic, mainly epistolary affair. Just when he gets to kiss her hand, he gets executed by the firing squad. What the hell! Timireva left her husband and son and Kolchak forgot his wife and daughters after they met in Manchuria in May 1918 and started living together. She wasn't wiping down the bloody puddles in the hospitals, she was on the list as a translator in his office. The sea of historical lies in the film is boundless. The details of sea battles that the real Kolchak didn't take any part in are ridiculous while the real ones he fought in are omitted. The slaughter of the officers in the Baltic fleet (March 1917) and the disarming of the officers in Sevastopol (July) are shown as if they're simultaneous. The fact is that the career-minded Kolchak was an enthusiastic revolutionary, was the first to pledge allegiance to the Provisional Government and even re-buried the remains of Lieutenant Shmidt. Kerensky didn't send him to the USA to prepare for the landing in Constantinople which the screenwriters invented: he left the fleet behind on his own initiative and went to the USA to exchange experience on mine warfare. The scariest thing is that you can't understand what was happening in Russia, who fought whom and why. But there's a lot of trash. A memorable scene is the amputation of General Kappel's frost-bitten feet. Actor Bezrukov now deserves a honorary title of Beznogiy. There's even more Orthodox Christian syrup. The characters are constantly holding church services, crossing themselves, kissing icons. It's easy to see why they lost both the World War and the Civil War. Even the body of the executed Kolchak is thrown into a cross-shaped ice-hole. But Kolchak is no saint at all: morphine addict, psychopath, bloody dictator, talentless commander, English agent who in his letters expressed hatred of such chimerae as good and brotherhood. Goes without saying that there's no acting to speak of. The actors' facial expressions don't change at all. Khabenskiy looks as though he just swallowed a toad, at the end of each episode he convulsively sets his naval jacket straight. Boyarskaya smiles sweetly. In short, Admiral is justly referred to as "our Titanic" - if the stupidly sunk ship is meant, not the movie of the same name.

Bumazhniy Soldat (Paper Soldier)
Russia, 2008
Directed by Alexei German Jr.
Starring Merab Ninidze, Chulpan Khamatova, Anastasiya Sheveleva
***
The image of a film that received a justified Silver prize at the Venice festival has already formed in the heads of the prospective viewers who read the reviews. Everyone knows that the film is a requiem for the men of the sixties, the paper soldiers who prepared the first flight of a man into space with sincere enthusiasm and then burned for nothing. In fact, all the canonical signs of the epoch, like a Hemingway photo on the wall or singing Okudzhava at the dacha are perfectly unnecessary in the film. It's a whole different story. The story of the madness of Daniil the doctor, not a very pleasant but interesting character, suspicious, narcissistic and impotent, cruel to women and living-dying as though in a dream. Actually, nearly all the characters live as though in a dream which they sometimes try to tell someone else about. And the untended vacant lot of Baikonur is not Baikonur, it is a dream of Baikonur. The only people who try to live and not be in someone's dream are the protagonist's women who despair to save him and just start living together.

Burn After Reading
USA, 2008
Directed by Ethan & Joel Coen
Starring George Clooney, Frances McDormand, John Malkovich, Tilda Swinton, Brad Pitt
*****
After the hermetic, seriously misanthropic and confusing "No Country For Old Men," the Coen brothers have regained their old form. They'd last shown a similarly stunning collection of morons, played by Hollywood's biggest stars at that, in Big Lebowski, but they were nice and harmless there, and not vampires. A spy fired by the CIA for being an alkie has lost a floppy disc with his memoirs that he considers sensational at a fitness club. The club's workers, a nutty bodybuilder and a chick who finds lovers by correspondence, get from the spy beatings instead of money for the floppy disc. Then they try to sell it to equally moronic characters at the Russian embassy. On top of that, the chick sleeps with the spy's wife's lover who is proud of  never "getting his gun out" despite many years in the security service. Sucked into spy games, nearly all of them will accidentially kill and then dismember each other. The most important thing the filmgoer has to remember is that he or she shouldn't try to figure out what exactly has happened. Even the hardened CIA men mournfully promise to learn a lesson from what has happened and to never do what they did as they count the corpses. And then sincerely get lost in thought: so what is it that we have done, eh?

Cassandra's Dream
Directed by Woody Allen
Starring Hayley Atwell, Colin Farrell, Ewan McGregor
***
The film isn't quite a remake of the wonderful Match Point which three years ago opened the London chapter in Allen's filmmaking but, shall we say, this is a variation on the theme. That's considering that Match Point was itself a paraphrase of "Crime & Punishment." That alone makes Cassandra's Dream a half-meaningless affair. Besides, after having managed to make Match Point without a punishment, Allen seems to have had a spasm of moralism which he never had before, now looking to dot the I's and cross all the t's. What we get is a neo-noir, surprising for this director. Two brothers in London desperately need money. One of them is a car mechanic and a gambler. Having made a big loss at the tables, he owes money to gangsters. The other one pretends to work in the hotel business and has to cut a dash for the cute little actress from a little independent theater. Meanwhile, all of their unpleasant family keeps mentioning the nearly saintly Uncle Howard who was the only one in the family to get on in the world and to become a millionaire. Howard seems to be a family myth, a ghost: it's not even known at which end of the world he's now doing his gesheft. But the uncle turns out to be a cheerful bastard who will provide some dough to the brothers if they'd get some man about to testify about the uncle's affairs out of the way. As soon as the action briskly gets to this point of no return, the interest for the film dissipates. It's obvious that if it goes left it'd turn into Match Point, and if it goes right it will sink in boring Dostoevskian rot. Which, alas, is what happens.

Wristcutters: A Love Story
USA, 2006
Directed by Goran Dukic
Starring Patrick Fugit, Shannyn Sossamon, Tom Waits
****
A charming independent film which can only be seen in early November only at Alexander Bashirov's "Chistiye Gryozy" festival at the Youth Palace. This is probably the only film in the world in which the plot starts with the protagonist's suicide. After which he appears in a world of suicides which is depicted in a witty, cynical and impudent manner. Everything there is pretty much the same as back on Earth, only it's all a bit shat-upon. The suicides tell each other the stories of how their lives ended, one more ridiculous than the other. A Russian-American rock musician is so disgusted with the audiences that time and again tell him to piss off from the stage that he pours beer on the amps and burns. The main character goes in search of his girlfriend, only later finding out that she also topped herself after he did. In the muso's car a real black hole is under the passenger seat and small items like lighters fall there, never to return. So that's where they all go, and I've been wondering how I had ten lighters yesterday and not even one today. But even in this world its inhabitants aren't free from the antiterrorist paranoia. The muso, for instance, is quite upset by the Arab-driven cab which goes round them. Though come to think of it, why would a suicide be afraid of suicide bombers? In short, one tasty idea piles on top of another, and the country invented by the shaggy director who looks like Kusturica is very much logical which rarely happens to invented worlds.