THE WICKED WITCH ISN’T DEAD: The film BABA YAGA: TERROR OF THE DARK FOREST.

An age old folk demon is after the kids of a prosperous housing development in Podgaevsky’s latest dark fantasy. My kids are safe. Are YOURS?

How we longed, this year, for that promised big freeze with its white cityscape. But winter never came.

Baba Yaga: Terror of the Dark Forest/Baba Yaga: Koshmar Temnova Lesa felt a bit the same. The internet hype first informed me that it would get its release on October 31st of last year. This then was moved forward to the following January. In the event it was in the theatres on 27th February, a deadzone for new films. (The only opposition came from Kalashnikov – a disgraceful biopic of a man who designed mechanisms to kill people with. Jesus wept!)

The irony was that on the day that I saw it, a mini-snow blizzard appeared in the city, as though winter too had made a desperate late showing!
The wait was worth it if only to see how this fifth supernatural tale from the emerging new voice in Russian film craft, the 37-year-old Muscovite Svyatoslav Podgaevsky would shape up.

Not only did he co-direct it (with Natalia Hencker) and co-write the film (alongside Natalya Dubovaya and Ivan Kapitonov) but he co-produced it for Non-Stop films.

As with The Queen of Spades: The Dark Rite (2016) and The Bride (2017) and, in particular, last year’s Rusalka: Lake of the Dead this project offers an idiosyncratic kind of muscular folk horror using East European folk tales as a backdrop.

The superb promotional poster for this film did much to cement its reputation long before it hit the screens. [Yello.com]

The cast includes the 37-year-old beauty from Severodvinsk, Svetlana Ustinova, who plays the nanny. Lending the film some needed gravitas Igor Khripunov also partakes. His craggy looks have graced four of Podgaevsky’s previous films, making him a sort of Russian Ralph Bates.

New Moscow.
The location constitutes one of the brand new sleeper dorms that are springing up outside Moscow to cater for wealthy young families( with the metro being expanded in order to accommodate them). Far from exuding the spooky ambience of your traditional horror setting, this locale feels aspirational and septic.

Nevertheless, it functions as an outpost. When the new buildings thin out we run into a dense and expansive area of forest. As the action unfolds the New Town and the Encircling Forest start to feel like players in the story.

Boy-saviour.
Egor, a fourteen year old boy (Oleg Chuginov) forms the film’s protagonist (making a change from the young women common to this genre). His life involves walking to his nearby school, dealing with hoodlums, making approaches to his sweetheart (Glafira Golubeva). and helping to care for his newborn kid sister.

His mother, played by Maryana Spivak (Loveless, 2017) and father, Denis Shvedov (The Mayor, 2013) seem distracted by career demands and hire a nanny to attend to their offspring….

So far we have a slice-of-Russian-middle-class-life. Then Egor starts to notice a presence menacing the baby….
Noticing a shadowy form on the baby’s video monitor, the boy creeps into the room only to be confronted with a menacing female apparition from which he flees….

He will later go deep into the dark forest with his sweetheart and former bully (Artyom Zhigulin) and team up with a hut dwelling hobo called Mrachnny (Khripunov) who has been watching children disappear from the locality and confirms this to be the work of Baba Yaga. The story then becomes a mission to save the baby, and thereby the family.

A Yaga for our times.
Yaga, a long-nosed wicked witch from Slavic folklore often gets depicted as living in a hut held aloft by chicken legs. She flies around on a mortar and displays a penchant for young children. She can, however, play a helpful role when so inclined.

Not so in this film’s updated version! A shape shifter, she she is a femme-fatale as a nanny but later manifests as a sort of peg-legged female Phantom of the Opera. Later on again she appears as an animated mass of red knitting wool.

The tense and humourless action is enlivened with some hallucinatory episodes and we enter a parallel time stream where the baby has become airbrushed out of existence and the now satanic parents are without memory of her. The plot, having begun as a ghost story accelerates into a rollicking dark fantasy romp.

Genre trappings.
For all the originality of the setting, the film falls back on many witchy hokum standbys. There are the kids against the corrupted elders. A bad nanny. Demonic possessions (complete with people’s eyes rolling up to the whites), baby dolls aplenty and people getting hurled about by occult powers.
The shock jumps are lined up like billiard balls and beging to pall after a while.
A portentous and numinous score by Nick Skachkov (On the Edge, 2019) helps to bind it all together.

Breaking new ground.
It feels a bold move to have used as the monster figure as well known to Russians as Jack and the Beanstalk is to Western Europeans. This was all of apiece with Podgaevsky’s earlier films. The last one reinvigorated Rusalka in the same fashion (a water nymph that gets mistranslated into mermaid in English).
Whether this will beget lasting screen idols to equal the vampires and werewolves of the last century remains to be seen. This represents a quiet innovation, however.

Baba Yaga: Terror of the Dark Forest sets the suburban modernity of the Russia of now on a collision course with a Slavic demon from very old Russia which lives in a forest next door.

There is plenty for a Jungian style psychoanalyst to chew over here. All of Podgaevsky’s recent movies have introduced us to wrathful female demons, for example. Then what is the significance of the red ball of wool that makes its appearance throughout this film?

Circus.
As with The Bride and Rusalka: Lake of the Dead I felt dazzled by the first hour of the film as the situation was being set up. Then when it all turned into a romp I became ever more detached and restless. Some of the supernatural elements stretched my credulity so much that I felt that anything could happen and the scariness of it got a bit lost.

Likewise, as much as young Egor makes for a valiant hero, he and his tweeny chums gave me the impression that I was sitting through something that might have been better aimed at a much younger demographic. (It is interesting to note that Podgaevsky cut his directorial teeth on a long established comedy T.V show called Jumble which features young kids and their daft ways).

That said this constitutes Podgaevsky’s least derivative and most assured work to date. The film is due to reach audiences in the Baltic States, South East Asia, Latin America and The USA.The director, who is working on a new film (Privorot/Dark Spell), is bound to become recognised on the international stage soon.

The featured image is from K.G Portal.

The trailer (dubbed into English):

BOYFRIENDS COME IN BOXES: The film (NOT) IDEAL MAN.

Does this satire on modern man-woman relations dig deep enough?

I was once acquainted with a professional Russian model who asked me one day if I could be her friend (and she did just mean friend). I doubt I need to explain why I was quick to talk my way out of that one…

This must be a common experience for desirable women in Russia, as well as elsewhere. Such female loneliness forms the starting point of the sex comedy-cum-romantic comedy (Not) Perfect Man (Nye Idealni Mushina). But what does it have to say about Russian men?

From a light entertainment troupe.
If you want the truth, I had gone to the cinema with the aim of seeing the science fiction epic Koma , which would have been much closer to my comfort zone. However, in the event I felt drawn to something altogether lighter. This was the evening of January 31st, and I am a British citizen. I just wanted to wrap my frenzied brain in candy floss and to forget the unfolding events at home.
A wrong call….

(Not ) Perfect Man constitutes a 12+certificate 90 minute long comedy - romance directed by Marius Balchunas. In the blurb for the film, this 48 year old wunderkind is described as the enfant terrible of cinema. This makes him sound like some sort of Pedro Almodovar like figure but in fact Balchunas, who studied TV Cinema in Southern California, is the culprit behind such vacuous fare as Naughty Grandmother (2017) and Naughty Grandmother 2 (2019).

The film’s protagonist is provided by the 37 year old Muscovite and stalwart of such comedies, Yulia Aleksandrova and the 25-year-old R&B crooner Egor Creed forms the love interest – by, more or less, playing himself.

Other major players include Artyem Suchkov (Gogol: The Terrible Revenge, 2018) and Roman Kurstyn (Pain Threshold, 2019).
No doubt it is pure coincidence that Zhora Kryzhovnikov – who along with Evgenia Khripkova worked on the script and was behind a TV series called Call Di Caprio last year – is the spouse of the leading lady.

Living ornaments.
Robots seem a hot topic in Russia right now. Andrey Junkovsky’s dystopian science fiction series Better Than Us (Lushi Chem Lyudi, 2018), which features a future containing human-like androids, has made waves on Netflix of late and the mini-series Tolya Robot, written by Aleksey Nuzhny for T.N.T, concerns a disabled man whose life is changed by bionic technology.

Likewise, if you just look at the premise of (Not) Perfect Man one could imagine it to have been adapted from one of Isaac Asimov’s more serio-comic robot short stories. In this near-future scenario human-like androids are on sale to the public and each one operates within the parameters of a given persona.These programmed personas might comprise an ideal Chef, an ideal Secretary, Security Guard…or Friend.

Sveta (Aleksandrova) is employed by a company which deals in these very items. Her job is to activate them and see to it that they are placed on display for shoppers. We learn, meanwhile, that she has caught her bodybuilding jock of a boyfriend (Kurtsyn) cheating on her. She is ready for a new romance….

Among the androids is a handsome and sensitive Friend (Creed) who soon gets snapped up by a middle-aged socialite. Later she returns him, however, in a state of exasperated fury. Tests show that there exists a fault in the robot’s programming and the company is ready to dispose of him. This is when Sveta, beguiled by his charm, comes to the rescue and takes him home with her as his new owner.

At first the robotic Friend seems like a Russian take on the fabled New Man of the 1980s in the West: kind, intimate and domesticated.

Complications ensue, however when this programmed people-pleaser becomes the best buddy of her ex-boyfriend. Then he obliges with some – not so 12 certicate friendly – physical solace to a distraught girfriend of Sveta’s. This results in a skirmish in which his face becomes broken.

With assistance from a nerdish colleague (Suchkov) – who has been falling for her all the while – she fixes his face and the fault in his programming. Or does she?

Sveta and her roboman soon become a poster couple for female -to-machine couplings. They arrange a lavish wedding on Krymsky Most. However, during the wedding vows the bride flirts with the woman who is leading the ceremony….

Salted popcorn.
Those who had entered the cinema to catch a science fiction movie would have left without stars in their eyes: the tomorrow’s world in which the story takes place is lacking in background exposition. The only concession to any technical detail occurs when we see Sveta animating the robots. Otherwise this could all be taking place in the Moscow of today.

(Not ) Perfect Man feels like your standard gossip-over-the-fence chick flick replete with emotive facial close ups, a quasiclassical score and a location which flits between a disinfected office, a swish nightclub and an imaculate apartment interior.

Nevertheless, the ending stears clear of the usual hugging-and-learning. In fact, it is cynical enough to suggest that some women will opt for illusory affection even when they know it to be so. Thus there was some unpredicted sadness at the core of the film.

One Dimensional Men.
The young couple sat next to me in the underpopulated cinema chuckled in the right places, but I did wonder if they would still have laughed if the genders had been reversed in the story.

I mean, the real – that is non-mechanical – men in this film offer a parade of messed up dullards and daffy meatheads. Even the alternative love interest, in the form of the colleague who really does care for our heroine, is a botannik (a wonk) and not so glamorous. They all get upstaged by a robot – a robot whose most woman-friendly qualities arise from a malfunction!

It seems that Russian men- growing up in a culture that smothers them with excess mother-love then packs them off to the army, where they may well be bullied by homophobes (even if straight) – are not encouraged to express themselves in a way which their female counterparts would appreciate.

Prove You’re Not a Robot.
Man/woman stuff aside, this film does have one simple premise working behind it (and that is something which both comedy and science fiction needs). It is that people are being commodified and subsumed into their work roles. The robots in this film all have pre- programmed work and social functions and can be distingiushed by the bar codes on their necks.

Had this film been slanted a bit more to the science-fiction end of things it could have been freer to explore the implications of this idea. It might well have even have been funnier in doing so. As it is, we are left with just as much a people-pleaser as Creed’s robot was and the film never rises above its own trivial level.

The trailer:

Main image: Yandex.com

FACE CONTROL: The TV series VIZHU – SNAYU/I SEE – I KNOW.

An upbeat mystery investigation adventure enlivened by an intriguing premise.

Crime seems to be the default genre option in Russian television drama and is as easy to find as a take-away coffee vendor on a Moscow high street.

Most of these constitute belt and braces hokum of the cops-and-robbers variety, replete with much cynical violence in the form of fisticuffs and shootouts.

However, when the Ukrainian (but Russian language) show The Sniffer first wafted onto our screens several years ago even the Western critics were a bit impressed by what could be done with this tired old subgenre.

Pretenders.

The Gazprom owned television company NTV has spawned a plethora of crime yarns and many of them cannot really be differentiated. Some, though, seem to be attempting to riff on The Sniffer.

One of these is Schubert (2017) and the recent Genius (Genniy) from last year.

The former features a protagonist with enhanced hearing abilities which result in him being put to work by the military.

The word `cheesy` seems to have been invented for this drama as the tortured young man, hot lover in tow, battles with moustache twirling Central Asian villains. I could only manage one episode.

Genius – in which a mathematical prodigy uses his algebraic prowess for an insurance company – was, however, easier on my grey cells but bent the wand too far in being somewhat dry.

Vizhu – Snayu or I See – I know, also courtesy of NTV, steers a mid-course between these two extremes. It was first aired in June 2016 and is a 16 + rated series made up of 46 minute long episodes. It was made by Kinostudio Medved from an idea by Viktor Soghomonyan (who was behind Posolstvo/ Embassy from 2018).

Superheroine.

The star is Anna Slyu (Slyusareva) a thrice married 39-year-old who made her name in the Daywatch/ Nightwatch franchise (2004/2006).

As Zhanna Vladimirovna she works as a police lieutenant who has been gifted with face reading abilities since childhood. She is now ` an expert in physiognomy and neuropsychology`. That is to say she can gather from observing a person’s facial features not only their character but their marital status and number of children and so on. (Zhanna’s face gazing activities form a large part of the architecture of the drama. They are realised through close-ups of Zhanna’s grey-eyed stare and of people’s faces complete with echoing voices and swishing sound effects).

Following her foiling of a terrorist attack on a supermarket, the general of a police unit introduces her to Mayor Kataev as a new part of the team. They are told to work together despite his dismissal of her talent a a `pseudo-science`.

Kataev – played by Sergei Gorobchenko (Provodnik, 2018) seems your standard self-assured no-nonsense lawman but he comes to respect his kookier new companion.

Alongside him is the inevitable tough-guy-with-a- heart – Petrov (Nikolai Kovbas (Temporary Difficulties, 2018), and Tvorizhkov, the ambitious rookie cop (Anton Khabarov, a veteran of the small screen) and the uniformed General who is heard in a shout most of the time, but is for once rather thin.

Such a team also requires a keyboard whizz. This vacancy is filled by Valeriy Pankov (Queen of Spades: Through the Looking Glass, 2019). He plays him, not as the usual geek, but more a stylish hipster. Yet we learn that he has a murky past with some mobster involvements.

Puzzling cases.

The team face cases involving mass poisonings, a weird cult that stages ritual murders, a strangler menacing the theatrical community and suchlike. Just as these cases seem to be cut and dried, Zhanna will add some plot thickening extra detail as gleaned from her facial recognition probings.

Throughout this she has a nemesis. Danilov a ruthless business tycoon, given to dining on balconies that have stunning views over the river Moskva, also possesses Zhanna’s face reading powers but uses them for his personal advancement.

Like a Moriarty figure, he appears to be behind various cloak-and-dagger operations aimed at creaming off the spoils of the criminal activities that the police squad are out to quash. (He is evoked to hiss inducing perfection by Sergei Shnyrev from What Men Talk About, 2010).

Not just bang – bang.

Despite being billed as `crime action`, I See – I know is based more on intrigue.The fast- paced script, by Leonid Korvin, creates a plot that resembles the opening up of an endless matrioshka doll. Each story is convoluted and takes up around two episodes. They conclude with Zhanna drawing philosophical conclusions to herself in her room full of her sketches of faces.

The open plan office the cops share allows for plenty of merry banter and there is space for human interest sub plots too.The hacker is besotted with Zhanna but is forever being rejected, in a polite way, by her. Zhanna lives with her sister and shares chocolate cake eating contests with her. Kataev, meanwhile has ongoing issues with his estranged daughter. Petrov tends to become too involved in his work: when a young member of his family is present at a shooting he becomes obsessive in his pursuit of the perpetrator.

Inspired theme.

The humdrum Moscow setting is enlivened a bit through stylish fragmented screen shots between scenes. They also borrow from the ubiquitous Sherlock in showing on-screen the names of mobile callers as they make a mobile call.

However, what adds much to the identity of the series must be the score composed by fifty year old Alexei Lukyanov. He has produced scores for many shows in this genre and here he serves up a manic waltz which foregrounds the twisty and quirky ethos of the entire drama. Likewise, his incidental music – set on `spine-tingle` mode – elevates the series above the realm of the ordinary.

Individual.

Female leads are not uncommon in contemporary Russia’s post-feminist culture. They are, however more of a novelty in the detective genre and Slyu, with her aristocratic looks and cool demeanour, does a lot to stamp some individuality onto what is a fairly standard format.

Offering a refreshing alternative to the `machismo` of many other similar shows and with a Spy-Fi premise that is more `real world` than The Sniffer, I see – I know packs a lot of charm. Alas, it only made one series of 24 episodes. There was so much more to build on here.

Here’s the first series:

Main image: Kino.Mail.ru

See also my reviews of Freud’s Method and Akademia. Also of Rassvet, which featured Anna Slyu.

THE DAY MOSCOW STOOD STILL: the film VTORZHENIYE (INVASION).

Can a Putinist popcorn merchant produce another film with something to say? The launch of INVASION – the long-awaited sequel to the science-fiction classic ATTRACTION – gave us a chance to find out.

I could smell the aftermath of fireworks as I hurried to the Yuzhny cinema in the unseasonal sleet and sludge. I was en route to a different type of pyrotechnic show. Like a dutiful Russian citizen, I was ready to see the very definition of a national blockbuster – VTORZHENIYE – INVASION.

This 12+ certificate extravaganza – a follow-up to ATTRACTION ( 2017) – had been promoted in every way possible. The TVs on in the metro carriages reminded us of it. Every cinema in town had an installation dedicated to it in the lobby. Hell, even the safety instructions at the beginning of this film were led by the actors from it!

For once, therefore, I could pick which cinema to go to. Also.this being the holiday season, I could choose when to go. I went to a showing in the Chertanovo region of Moscow, which is where ATTRACTION had been set and filmed. I chose three days after its December 31st opening as a way to mark the New Year.

Bondarchuk’s shadow.
The fifty-two-year old Muscovite Fyodor Bondarchuk heads Art Picture Studios as the director of INVASION. Something of an establishment lynchpin, this man is known for his grandstanding for the President of Russia and for the ruling United Russia party.

In terms of style, he seems something of a cinematic Christopher Marlowe who aims for the big, the brash and the loud. In accordance with this he has been responsible for such evocations of patriotic heroism as Stalingrad (2013).
Bondarchuk, however, does have form with the rather more cerebral science fiction genre. Before ATTRACTION he surprised critics with a faithful rendition of an Arkady & Boris Strugatsky novel in the form of The Dark Planet (2008).

So whilst Bondarchuk’s name is not one that would draw me to see a film, my interest was piqued by the fact that I had enjoyed ATTRACTION. In that film, the aliens were obvious representations of immigrants and the Other. `Let’s try to hear each other` was Bondarchuk’s summary of his message at the time (quoted in Flickering Myth, January 22nd, 2018). I was intrigued by this apparent cryptoliberalism and concerned to see whether it would continue in what is also known as ATTRACTION 2.

Dejavu.
The cast list from ATTRACTION are back in service. Irina Starshenbaum – who I last saw as a rock and roll widow in Summer – plays Yulia Lebedev once more and the 59-year-old Laurence Olivier Theatre Award winner Oleg Menshikov is still her father and her geek buddy, Google, remains as Evgeni Miksheev.

Alexander Petrov – proving yet again that he’s a big enough actor (and man) to depict rather pathetic characters – returns as Yulia’s would be lover.

The thirty year old Rinal Mukhamentov (The Three Musketeers, 2013) – a sort of Tatar Justin Timberlake – reprises his role as Hakon, the alien.
The other stars – the fun gizmos – also make a welcome return. The now iconic gyroscope like mothership has been replaced and is circling our planet again. The Transformer-like exoskeletal body combat suit also re-appears as does all that aquatic witchcraft which has water coiling in spirals in the air.

Filmed in IMAX by Vladislav Opelyants (Hostages, 2017) and with a score by the much in demand Igor Vdovin (Another Woman, 2019) INVASION attempts to satisfy every cinema going demographic. Half family drama and romance and half military adventure, the scenes lurch between smoochy bits, tense action and disaster movie grandeur and then back again.

Sorcery from the sky.
We find ourselves in the present day, but it is one in which the events of ATTRACTION have taken place. (The back story is suggested in the opening credits by the use of frozen lazer-like stills from key scenes of the earlier film).

Yulia now studies astrophysics in Moscow alongside her loyal mate Google. She is, however, no ordinary woman. Always flanked by bodyguards, she is under investigation by a new military unit concerned with all things E.T, led by her father. She spends her evenings in a flotation tank, being tested for psi-powers.

Russia, meanwhile, is busy aspiring to reverse engineer the technology that the aliens had left in their wake. Meanwhile they have surrounded our planet with defense satellites to prevent further incursions into our atmosphere.

The military unit re-introduces Yulia to Artyom, who is now incapacitated by a stroke. This is a deliberate ploy. The disturbance this creates in Yulia’s mind results in a telekinetic storm.

Later, as she knocks back a few medicinal cocktails in a downtown bar and tries to flirt with her minder, Hakon makes a sudden re-appearance….

The handsome star man is now earthbound and ensconced in a pleasant dacha outside Moscow. However, he continues to be in contact with a mothership’s on board computer. He has gained the information that an alien Artificial Intelligence called Ra has taken an interest in Yulia’s awakened psychic powers.
The couple elope with the military in hot pursuit. The rest of the action consists of a three-way tussle between Hakon and Yulia, the military and the mysterious Ra.

Ra has the ability to control the world’s electronic media and puts out the fake news that Yulia is a terrorist. Later, in a rather Biblical episode, it summons up the waters around and below Moscow to envelop the city in a sort of vertical whirlpool….

…Or something. If this plot sounds freakish and preposterous that is because it is nothing more than a Christmas tree upon which various spectacular action scenes – military helicopters spiralling out of control, geysers destroying Park Kulturi metro station and so on – are hung.

Yulia’s story.
There is much tension between the intimate and the global in all of this. At its core, INVASION concerns the emotional journey of Yulia and her fixing it with her father, making peace with Artyom and deepening her relationship with Hakon. Starshenbaum has enough magnetism to make this focus work.

Otherwise the film is lacking in a central idea of the kind that made ATTRACTION so interesting. Sure, the subplot about fake news in the electronic mass media is very topical, but it is not at the heart of the story.

Whilst a composite of many motion pictures that have gone before it, INVASION is quite distinctive in its overall effect. The recent Avanpost however, covered the same sort of territory with bleaker conviction.

Still, as I shook my head through this two hour and thirteen minute farrago, I thought: what a roaring way to welcome in the Roaring Twenties!

Main image: capelight.de

Trailer to INVASION (English subtitles).

VOT ETA DA!

Seven Significant Signposts of 2019.

In terms of publishing, it was cheering to see that Karo Publishers in St Petersburg have made ALEXANDER BELYAEV’S THE AMPHIBIAN available to the Anglophone world – a work of speculative fiction that speaks anew to our own age of biological engineering. Let us hope that this marks a new trend of reprinting works in English that are not just the routine Golden and Silver Age standard
In music, the band to watch out for next year must be SUNWALTER. They have spent much of 2019 working hard on tours of Eastern Europe making their distinctive brand of melodic science fiction themed pomp rock known to the world. I wish them the break they deserve. Meanwhile, IC3PEAK have become figureheads of youthful opposition with their innovative Witch House sound. Long may they keep this up! That the Russian Rock scene proper is not altogether extinct is evidenced by PILOT who still stage raucous but thoughtful alt rock commentaries on the 21st century to crowds of loyal follwers.
Cinema. Out of nowhere came the gem LOST ISLAND (Potteryanni Ostrov) – a dreamlike curio that, behind its apparent whimsy, had a point to make about Russian isolationism. In more mainstream releases, the thriller BREAKAWAY (OTRYV) demonstrated that Russia can produce a tense and effective edge-of-the seat affair to rival anything that comes from Hollywood. Then this was also the year in which the big screen shook its fist: the film adaptation of Dmitri Glukhovsky’s TEXT held up a mirror to present day Russian society and created an emblem for these times – and not just for Russia.

WISHING ALL MY READERS A PEACEFUL AND PROGRESSIVE NEW YEAR! From GENERATION P: The one-stop shop for all things of promise to come out of Modern Russia.

Remembrance of the past kills all present energy and deadens all hope for the future – Maxim Gorky.

IT’S NOT A BOY! The film `Tvar` (`Stray`).

Another demon-child yarn with added sophistication, a pleasing autumnal ambience and a great role for Elena Lyadova.

All too many of the Russian made scary movies that I have promoted on here have had certain features in common. As much as they have prompted me to nod my head with a smile, they have sought to mimic Hollywood and to court those of college age.

Among the exceptions to this is TVAR (STRAY) a chiller delivered with some style. In fact, this enterprise is assured enough to risk being subtle as well as – not always a quality found in modern Russian cinema – original in parts.

From the `Queen of horror`.

TVAR opened in the cinemas on 28th November this year with a 16+ certificate. The picture houses sold it as a `detective mystery story`, which may be significant terms of marketing,, but this is really a supernatural thriller par excellence and one tailor made for the season in which it appeared.

The creator of the story is none other than Anna Starobinets who, on account of her short stories, has been dubbed Russia’s `Queen of horror`. Behind the cameras was Olga Gorodetska, who here is directing her first full length film (an hour and a half long). Ilya Ovsenev, who has worked on the forthcoming `Project Gemini`, was the cinematographer. Several production companies seem to have had some involvement in TVAR. The notable ones include Star Media – the purveyors of numerous effective television melodramas – and TV3, who seem to have their hand in every pie these days.

The main star on consists of Elena Lyadova, the 39-year-old Morshansk born actress,who many will be familiar with from the grim social-realist fable Leviathan (2014). She is joined by Vladimir Vdovichenkov who is 48 and also appeared in Leviathan. An other talent is Yevgeny Tsyganov who featured in Provodnik last year.

Family drama.

TVAR revolves around hearth and home and in the relations between man and wife and their children. In accordance with this, the areas touched on include grief, self-deception and indomitable mother love.

A couple in early middle -age, in recovery from the unspeakable loss of their first son, form the main protagonists. They find themselves visiting an orphange outside Moscow with the aim of finding a surrogate son to adopt.

Overseen by nuns, the forbidding institution is filled with cots, but none of their inhabitants inspire Polina, the bereaved mother (Lyadova), a former teacher. However, she then claps eyes on a wayward and neglected child who has secreted himself away in the basement of the building following the suicide of his father.

Enigma.

She is at once drawn to this odd-looking and angular child. When she asks to be granted the role of his new mother, she is met with some resistance from the nuns and also some scepticism from her more conventional but supportive husband (Vdovichenkov).

Polina persists and at length the couple take the boy to their home. The boy seems to respond to the loving attentions of his new mother but remains somewhat feral. He is given to scurrying beneath his bed when people appear,stuffing raw meat into his mouth, and crouching on top of furniture ready to pounce.( A bold performance from one Sevastyan Bugaev). On top of all that, there is mounting evidence that this boy is no ordinary maladjusted kid. He commits a serious assault on another child, for example. Nevertheless, the smitten mother comes to believe that he could even be a reincarnation of her lost son….

The Polina finds herself to be pregnant with a new child of her own….

New handling.

The drama skirts close to two cinema classics concerning demonic children: The Exorcist (1973) and The Omen (1976) and even seems to reference them in one or two scenes.

That said, as much as the blood-and-thunder elements are central to the tale, the film downplays them a bit. It does so through the use of anti-climax and avoidance of clichés, putting only enough pepper into the soup to give it the necessary tang. So the supernatural situation may be old hat, but the handling of it blows the cobwebs away.

A film for its season.
[kinoafisha.info]

The adventurous photography of Ovsenev (we are treated to some unusual camera angles) and the overall direction (we are confounded with a false ending) make for memorable stylish stuff.

Then an overaching ambient score (from Alexander Slyootskiy and Karim Nasser) ramps up the Halloween atmosphere as the action moves between the creepy nun’s mansion, the couple’s swish Moscow apartment and then their dacha in the forest.

It is Lyadova’s sustained performance as a woman haunted in every sense of the word that adds gravitas to the whole tale.

TVAR has something of Don’t Look Now (1973) about it and also, from the same period, makes a nod towards Solaris (1972) at one key juncture. TVAR, though, with its small innovations and misty twilight setting, is all its own. It offers horror for grown ups.

TRAILER FOR `TVAR`

Featured image: youtube.com.

TRAFFIC JAMS? WE KNOW A SONG ABOUT THAT, DON’T WE? GOROD 312 live at the Mumy Troll music bar, December 7th.

Kyrgyztan’s local heroes excite loyal fans in a routine concert.

Silhouetted against the red and purple floodlights Masha Illeeva, the modelesque lead guitarist of GOROD 312 sways and sings along to the robust pop-rock classics of her band, a picture of joyful absorption,infecting the audience with the same fleeting delirium….

Despite being more of a rocker than popper, I have followed GOROD 312 for over a decade in whilst in Russia. This merry band of talented Kyrgyz, with their distinctive act, represent something vital that has come out of the noughties.
GOROD 312 hail from Bishek, the picturesque capital of Kyrgyzstan – their very name references the dialling code of that city. Now based in Moscow they have, over the last 18 years conjured up five well received albums, featured on many films and TV soundtracks and become a household name throughout the C.I.S countries.

The band comprises of the 49-year-old songstress Sveltlana Nazarenko (Aya), Dmitir Pritula (Dima) the keyboardist and backing vocalist with the bassist Leonid Pritula. The main string merchant is Maria Illeeva (who, if you want the gossip, is married to Dima). Of late some newcomers have joined the retinue – such as Aleksander Il’Chuck (Alex).

They sing of traffic jams, the changing of the seasons, urban life and heartache and, brimming with exuberant chutzpah, offer a live act in which they seem to take genuine relish. With sheer musical aplomb they fuse rock, blues and dance music and deal very much is songs, which are led by Aya. I tend to view the gropu as an Eastern Blondie.
Conventional but rousing.
Despite the 3,000 rouble tickets – the most I have paid for a gig in Moscow -Mumy troll Music Bar soon filled up with unpretentious punters, most in their thirties.
The first sign of the band’s imminent arrival was the flashing up of a chic logo on the screen behind the stage. (The rest of the visual accompaniment turned out to be a disappointment, consisting of a rehash of their old music videos).

With an extra lead guitar they functioned as a six piece with a fuller and more detailed sound. Otherwise they look unaltered by time (they might have been the same people I saw live five or so years back) and deliver compositions which match the quality of their live recordings.

Festooned in silver necklaces, Aya is an engaging frontwoman. Sometimes she would appear to be singing to individual members of the audience. She also encouraged us to sing along – now the women, now the men. In fact, in this respect the band were poles apart from Delfin, who I saw this time last year and found to be somewhat remote. (The other musicians in the band did seem to be a little less involved though).

Later there would be a drum solo, another cosy routine and one which I quite enjoyed this time. Meanwhile, they strutted their stuff though a lot of cherished standards – Fonari, Pomaginye, Gipnos (a rare duet),the anthemic Devochka, Katorya Hotelya Schastya and of course that karaoke standard Ostanus. They showcased a few new numbers including a lachrymose one about friendship which had the people around me hugging each other. What was lacking was the ever catchy Nevidimka (Invisible Woman) as well as some of their edgier alt rock pieces.

It proved an average set but one which after an hour and a half of it had us wanting more. Their main trick – which constitutes the very stuff of effective pop – is to make cheeriness seem cool. They acknowledge some reality in their upbeat ditties, but as they play you want to step into their world.

Nevidimka (Invisible Woman)by Gorod 312.

BORDERLAND TROOPERS: the long awaited film AVANPOST.

Is there anything more to this 1812 Overture of a movie than pomp and glitz?

Fingers on triggers, a detachment of troops lie in wait at the edge of the forest. They sense something is about to happen. Then there is a rumbling sound growing ever louder. Then, from out of the trees, comes a mass of marauding bears. The soldiers open fire at the possessed animals, but still they come….

Every so often the Russian Federation knocks out an ambitious and lavish screen production like Daywatch (2006) or Dark Planet (2008) to impress the world with.

The science fiction action thriller AVANPOST – its Western title is The Blackout – is fresh from that same assembly line. Trumpeted by electronic billboards all over Moscow, this grandiose epic arrives after having been in gestation for several years and is being shipped out to cinemas in the Baltic and also Austria and Germany.

AVANPOST , a product of 123 Productions, TNT Premier and TV3 – represents another collaboration between television and cinema in the manner of the recent Gogol franchise (2017 – 2018). Indeed the cinematographer behind this also worked on those Gogol movies. As we shall see, however, AVANPOST is far removed from the whimsical nature of that franchise.

The thirty-eight year old Muscovite Ilya Kulikov, who scripted The Envelope (2017) wielded the pen here and the 31 year old Ekaterinburg born Yegor Baranov directed this . He has form on such ambitious projects: he was responsible for `Russia’s first erotic thriller` – Sanchara (Locust) (2103). He too was involved in the Gogol series.

There are some established names in the cast list as well. The 37-year-old Pyotr Federov (Ledokol, 2016) forms one of the main leads as does Alexei Chadov (Dark Planet).

Mood music plays a conspicuous role in this motion picture. Ryan Otter’s majestic and doomy style of composition, evident in Abigail (2019) fits the bill here. Also though, none other than Linkin Park‘s Mike Shinoda has recorded a song – `Fine` – just for the film.

`Who will save you when the world falls into darkness?`
[youtube.com]

Entrapment.

The action occurs about fifteen years hence and in the capital of Russia. Drone like vehicles light up the city sky, people consult transparent cell phones and holographic displays are all over the place. Otherwise life goes on much as before.

We are introduced to the men and women who are to be the protagonists, including a businessman and a taxi driver – before the cataclysm turns everyone’s life upside down.

Without warning, planes drop from the skies as the lights go out plunging much of the world into darkness and vast swathes of humanity perish without any known cause.

One of the areas left unaffected consists of a large part of Moscow. Here life seems to continue unabated (who needs imports?) although the Muslim community has become strident.

Everyday life has become brutalised too. In one gratuitous sequence, one of our heroes stabs a man in the hand with a small ice breaker from the bar of a nightclub for getting a bit persistent with a woman at a nightclub. Later, after this man has followed the couple outside, their taxi driver obliges by shooting him in the leg twice.

The crucial change, however, is that a military detachment has been set up to monitor the outskirts of the – as they call it – `circle of life`. Both men and women of a certain age are conscripted into this.

The rest of the story concerns the predicament and exploits of these soldiers. Much of the action henceforth consists of them togged up and carrying guns with lazer sights, en masse beneath a leaden sky or at night, battling with an invisible foe in the manner of Predator(1987) – which is name checked in the dialogue.

Adversaries.

It is when the villains – they are interstellar interlopers – show themselves that the credibility that the film had so far tried so hard to build up begins to crack.

The aliens- Lord Voldermort lookalikes – prove both unoriginal and a little silly. They communicate via mind transference and also have the ability to mess with our perceptions. They can make us imagine that our long-lost fathers are paying us a visit when what is really there is a nonplussed cop. This way they set hordes of zombified people up against the valiant men and women in uniform, who then have to gun down the former in cold blood. It is all a bit like a cross between Skyline (2016) and World War Z (2013).

Of course there are added subtleties to the plot. The aliens seem to contain factions within their population and the Outpost leaders make an alliance with one of them. (A situation reminiscent of the Gene Roddenberry inspired Canadian T V show Earth Final Conflict from the Nineties).

The entry of the alien’s mothership – a rickety almost steampunkish affair – into Moscow airspace reminds us that there could be the makings of good science fiction somewhere in this – but it comes as the show closes.

Slick.

AVANPOST offers a glossy experience with action and plot in thrall to appearances.Even for a two and a half hour show it felt as though the canvas was too small for the ideas in it (for there were some) to be developed in full. We may have to wait for the threatened sequel or a proposed TV series for that.

I was put in mind of several cinematic forerunners, some of which I have already mentioned. The worst comparison I made, though was with Starship Troopers (1997), because it had the same militarism but lacked the irony which made that picture worthwhile.

The film may be an example of Russian `soft power`. A commentator called Daryanoff, writing a user review in the IMDB, seems to think so: `as a Russian this is a point to pride`, he says. Yet the things that mark this out as a Russian product – the paranoid sense of being encircled, for example – are the very things which will do nothing to dispel any negative stereotypes of Russians that are out there.

AVANPOST failed to charm me. I was as repelled by its cynical violence just as I came to be suspicious of its humorless machismo. The film, however, did stay with me for far longer than many a better film has done.

Featured image from: Kinopoisk.ru.

AVANPOST:International trailer (English).

ROARING TRADE: PILOT LIVE AT GLAV CLUB, MOSCOW NOVEMBER 9TH.

Is this much-loved band the saviour of the Russian rock genre?

This November Saturday night proved to be as grey as the preceding October and I hoped that this band, new to me, could buoy me up – in particular as those last two live gigs had left me unmoved.
They did.

Pilot [short /i/and beat on the second syllable] were recommended to me during a rare chance encounter with a self-confessed Russian rock fan who was also a Russian himself. This seemed a good enough omen in itself.

The Pied Piper’s of St Pete’s.
The second good omen came when I tried to get my ticket. For various reasons I buy my tickets in person over the counter. My trusty usual kiosk told me that all the tickets had already been pocketed. I got lucky at another place however.
Then at the Glav Green Club itself I encountered a queue on my way in and, along this, wideboys were pushing last-minute offers for anyone who had turned up on the off-chance.

The gig going community – and this night it did feel like a community – became so populous that we had to wait our turns to get in and out of the venue.

In the lobby meanwhile, the band’s merchandise – the lemon yellow wooly hats and scarves -were getting swallowed up faster than the stall holders could unbox new batches of them.
After twenty-two years of strumming and pounding, Pilot have the capacity to really pull the crowds.

Alt rock institution.

Conceived and organised in the rainy second capital of St Petersburg by Ilya `Chort`Knabengof in 1997, the band, first under the moniker Military Jane, have honed their own local strain of hard indie rock. This incorporates folkish and punkish influences but within an industrial sensibility.
What’s more, their Russian nationality seems to be encoded into these sonic emanations. Throughout their existence they have been transmorgifying into a unique brand, complete with a recognisable cartoon logo, numerous fan sites, endless photo shoots and so on.
In this tour they were revisiting an album called `Fish, Mole and Pig` which was first produced 15 years back.

Anthems for the 21st Century.
The doors of the concert venue were unlocked at 7 pm and the four piece materialised about an hour and a half later. There was no warm up act.
Following a shamanic sounding introductory soundtrack, the drummer, Nikita Belozyorov, arrived shirtless. The bass guitarist, Sergei Vyrvrich, a relaxed tall man with a floppy blonde fringe, came on next. Then Ilya himself appeared – wearing shades, which he never removed. The keyboardist was invisible (supplied by digital means, I presume).

They compensated for their nondescript appearance with much use of back projections to underscore the songs themes. Not that it was easy to see that much anyway, through the vineyard of raised phones, scarfs and girlfriends sat on shoulders.

Their opener was a declaration of intent just called `Rock`. Many in the audience seemed to have anticipated this as they held up pictures of the horned fist salute with the words `Rock` written beneath.
The next number spoke of their civic pride for their home city as the backdrop showcased it all with shots of the spires and waterways of that city. There were songs about the sex industry, the Hindu religion, psychopaths (`Nye Chelovek`) and one titled `Terrorism`.

Pilot, without offering leadership, could not be called escapist and do seem willing to confront the questions of the day.
That said, some of their compositions showed unashamed sentimentality. One involved a visual tour through old family albums and another, celebrating the band’s longevity, showcased children’s drawings from yesteryear as balloons dropped down from the ceiling.

Quite singular.
Like t.A.T.u, Pilot prove a more impressive experience live than in recorded format. Belozyorov’s tom -toms, put high in the mix, are a great boon in the upbeat ambience they create. In fact, Pilot dish out quite a detailed sound with keyboard melodies and guitar digressions aplenty.

I find it difficult to twin this outfit with any that I know in the West. Pilot owe a clear debt to the grunge of the Nineties. Otherwise they might be understood as a more slick version of their compatriots Posledni Tanki V Paris.

If `Russian rock` constitutes a genre in its own right, and many contend that it does, then Pilot might be said to be one of its last remaining popular exponents.
Sure, there are bands like Louna and IC3Peak, but the former seem to belong to an international nu metal trend and the latter to an international dark wave hip-hop tendency. Pilot are Russian-Russian.

My kind of crowd.
The feeling in the air of this enjoyable gig had a lot to do with the punters. In their thirties and forties and not dressed to impress, they exuded cheery bonhomie. For example, they offered to hold my beer for me as I tried to take pictures. I saw no fights break out.

We all downed quite a few Tuborg’s together with a lot of help from the – let me say – angelic bar staff. I got a real sense of this being an audience who were not just here to see the band, but here to say: Here we all are! Just look at us all!

`Osyen` by Pilot.

Main image:Flavara.com

TEXT AND BE DAMNED: The Russian film TEKCT.

Anger is not something we expect from Russian cinema – but it is here at last.

TEKCT enjoyed a Decent run in the Moscow film theatre but I could only get to see it a week after its 24th October release at the Rodin theatre in Semyenovskaya.

With its train station-lie dowdiness and the Hammer and Sickle still there above the cash desk, and the harried staff, this place proved to be a fitting venue to catch this social realist fable. In fact I just nabbed the last available place in the twenty seat capacity projection room which had been set aside for the film.

TEKCT constitutes a drama thriller some two hours in length and with an 18+ certificate (hence featuring a lot of irritating bleeps over the bad language). Set very much in the Moscow of today, this picture represents an adaptation, by the author himself, of the novel By Dmitry Glukhovsky (of the Metro franchise) – which has yet to be translated into English.

General Partnership were the distributors, and the man in the high chair was one Kilma Shipenko who was behind the docudrama Salyut 7 (2017).
The soundtrack, which alternated between electronica and sombre classical owes to the prolific forty something composer Dmitry Noskov whose previous credits include the soundtrack to Attraction (2017).

Star vehicle.
Russia’s man-of-the-moment, the Yaroslavl born thirty-year old Alexander Petrov fills the shoes of the iconic role of the film’s anti-hero. (He seems to be cornering the market in troubled youths: whetther it is his role as the hotheaded insurgent in Attraction or his depiction of one Nikolai Gogol in the Gogol franchise (2017 -2018) ).
His co-stars include 29-year-old Ivan Yankovski, who cropped up in Queen of Spades: Dark Rite (2016) – as the Golden Boy hate figure – and the 27-year-old Kristina Asmus who has been setting pulses racing in the television medical comedy Intern since 2010.

The new Brat?
TEKCT was competing in the Russian box offices with Joker. It would be egregious of me to draw too many parallels between these two distinct products. I do, however, feel that they partake of the same zetgeist. Both highlight the plight of – and potential danger of – troubled young men on the margins of society.
Another comparison already being made is with the much vaunted earlier Russian movie Brat (Aleksei Balabanov, 1997).
An article by Anastasia Rogova in the (hard copy) newspaper Vechernaya Moskva (24th – 31st October issue) finds TEKCT wanting in relation to the other legendary film. However, the mere fact that the films have been bracketed together at all implies to me that TEKCT is a film that Russians will be discussing still for some time to come.

A Hero of Our Times?
Ilya Gorunov (Petrov), a graphic design student, attempts to blag some money off his mother so that he can hit the town with his girlfriend.When she refuses he takes the money anyway…
Next we see him a standard young man about town with his girlfriend in tow and in a trendy nightclub. His fun is interrupted when the politisia carry out a drugs raid the premises and seem to take interest in his woman. He protests, and then, in a scene which calls to mind Midnight Express, is himself arrested after a stash of cannabis seems to be found on his person. (We know the cops have planted this on him).
Seven years later, after having been imprisoned for drug trafficking, the hapless youth is released from his provincial jail and back into the real world.
Returning to Moscow, now a shambling figure in a parka and ill-fitting trousers, Ilya finds that his mother has passed away and that his friends have moved on.
He then tracks down his persecutor – Pyotr (Yankovski). In a fit of rancour he slaughters him by accident. He hides the corpse down a manhole and takes off with the victims cellphone….

Window on the other half.

Ivan Yankovski as the Golden Boy.
[newsmyseldon.com}

Here the Metro author’s gift for simple but ingenious plot ideas comes into play.
Ilya begins to experiment with the shady lawman’s phone. He begins to watch the many videos the man had downloaded showing his life of conspicuous consumption. He indulges in envious voyeurism at the lifestyle that he has been deprived of. He even pleasures himself over proxy sex with the man’s girlfriend (Asmus).
He becomes ever more embroiled in the man’s stolen identity living a sort of substitute existence. He answers text messages – explaining his absence by saying that he is in Columbia – and connects with the girlfriend.
This film shares the same concern with the loss of identity that social media can encourage in the much more stylish film Selfie (Khomeriki 2018).
Another resonance is with the Garros Evdomikov novel (as I reviewed earlier) Headcrusher (2003). This also evokes a lawman who wins female trophies and an oustider who gets to tangle with the games of the Big Boys. Ilya may be somewhat pathetic but the kind of modern Russian freeloaders that he is up against are far, far worse than he is.

Howl.
The film closes on a defiant note with a denouement that has shades of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) about it.
This could not be called a lovable film and I would not hurry to see it again just yet; however it is unflinching in its honesty and of importance in its themes – all qualities which Russian cinema too often lacks.
Petrov has turned in a fine, vigorous and physical performance in a film in which the camera is almost always on him.
Some gratitude is also due to Glukhovsky who, in his fortieth year, has Hollywood knocking on his door but has still retained his oppositional spunk.

Trailer to TEKCT (Russian).

Main image: bel.kp.ru