Drama – Generation P: Edward Crabtree's blog.

WINTER CHILLS: Three Ruskinoir thrillers.

Get closer to the fire and let me tell you about – `He Who Turns Out the Light,Zamyachni and The Highway.`

The winters here in Kazakhstan can be as cruel as the ones that I left behind in Russia. A windy day with minus thirty is no laughing matter nor are the ice-rink pavements, the early darkness nor the fact that you suffer from constant low-level flu.

To make it through this I turn to dark tales. Russian crime thrillers, courtesy of pirated DVDs found at the local open-air markets, are just what the doctor ordered.

Under the influence of Nordic Noir, a fresh `drama detective` subgenre has emerged in Russian TV and film in the 2000s. These show elements of psychological thrillers and are Horror adjacent with it.

Here follow three examples of what I mean:

From 2008 He Who Turns Out the Light (Tot Kto on Gasit Svet) constitutes an 86-minute-long cinema debut by the director Andrei Libenson (also known for the science-fantasy extravaganza Coma from 2012 as well as Zamyachni).

Based on a story called Dark Water by Oleg Osipov, this Non -Stop production features some hefty names in screen acting. These include the matinee idol Alexander Guskov in the lead role and Ekaterina Vilkova (no stranger to this genre, having been in Cold Shores and Detektor). The score is the work of the busy Lugansk born composer Yuri Potenko (First Time (2017), Inhabited Island (2008), to name but some.

In St Petersburg, goes the story, a killer is at large. He slays a young girl every Wednesday. The action opens on the second month of the investigation. The murders continue. Pyotr Moiseyev (Guskov) – the chief investigator is feeling the strain.

Then a suspect is detained. He appears to confess. Moiseyev has his doubts as to whether they have the right man but the beleaguered constabulary tell the press that they have triumphed. Following a tip, Moiseyev finds himself on a train to Svetogorsk. (This is a real town in the Kaliningrad region, although the film was not shot there). He discovers that the locale is overseen by a rogue local police chief who stymies him at every turn. Things lead to an action-packed finale where the surprise face of the real killer is unmasked….

The crepuscular look of everything. The dwelling on the corruption in high places. Guskov’s hardboiled lone wolf detective. Vilkova’s femme fatale – all screams `Noir`. This is represents a more American style Noir though and would look a little dated 15 years later. Nevertheless, He Who Turns Out the Lights is a bit of a lost classic that was more appreciated in select screenings abroad than it was in Russian cinemas.

*Fear is the sovereign* the tagline to *He Who Turns Out the Lights.* [Kartina2 T.V]

Zamyachni – the title of the next thriller – had me running for the dictionary, but in fact it bears the name of the fictional village where much of the action occurs. Also directed by Andrei Liberman it constitutes an 8 series television drama broadcast in 2023 (after languishing in a vault for four years after production). This also began life as a novel, this time by Ilya Bushin.

The 35-year-old Minsk born Tatiana Cherdyntseva – better known for appearing in T.V melodramas with titles like The Unloved Daughter-in Law (2023) -shares the lead role with forty-year-old Muscovite Alexei Bordukov (Mosga 2, 2021). (It is refreshing, by the way, to find a story where a hero and heroine share the main role).

The charming miscreant this time is a serial killer with a fondness for gouging the eyes out of his young female victims. He has struck again in 2001 (when most of the drama is set) but began his deeds in 1990 – a time to which we get repeated flashbacks.

The two police Investigators meet up again in the process of enquiring into the matter. They share a tragic fate: he lost his fiancé to the killer, she her sister (both being one and the same). He is on an obsessive quest for vengeance. She, meanwhile, seems locked in a complex relationship with her mother and experiences blackouts.

Zamyachni itself forms a large part of the story having become a retreat for criminal elements. When the police roll up, on the trail of the killer, the locals hurl stones at them. (The title of Bushman’s novel is `No Man’s Land`). The proceedings, rather than dwell on gruesome details, lean into eeriness. Evgeny Federov’s score does much to enhance this as do the emotional performances of the cast. Cherdyntseva in particular conveys a sense of herself as being haunted. Most powerful of all though are the expressionistic use of lighting and sets.

A man and a woman both function as the heroes. [Dzen.ru]

Plot wise, however, Zamyachnicommits one cardinal howler. The culprit jumps out of nowhere at the end, without having been a suspect or even seen earlier.

In Trassa (`The Highway`), a 10 episode `psychological detective thriller` from 2024. It leads us even deeper into the underworld. The man behind the cameras this time is Dusan Gligorov who had already excelled in this genre with the TV serial `Krystalni` from four years ago. The scribe – who has his name on such cinema blockbusters as Invasion (2019) and Sputnik (2020) – is 54-year-old Oleg Maluvichko.

Karina Razumovskaya, a 41-yeatr old St Petersburgian who made her name in the TV series Major (2014 -2022) -gets the difficult task of portraying a troubled and sometimes unsympathetic protagonist. She plays alongside the 50-year-old Anna Nikitichna as a doughtier police investigator.

The story begins with a teenage girl in a rural area being saved from suicide after having shot both her parent’s dead. Meanwhile a female judge finds that her adopted daughter has absconded in order to search for her real mum and dad – but then leaves a terrifying voice message pleading for help…The two events prove to be intertwined…

A promotional poster for *Trassa/ The Highway.* [RuTube.ru]

The criminal aspect this time is a shadowy but many tentacled fraternity that has systematized the kidnapping and sexual exploitation of young girls. Their stomping ground is the town of Mineralni Vody through which the titular highway runs.

It is in this series that one of the most harrowing sequences that I have yet seen on either film or television occurs (in brief, it involves the date rape and abduction of a teenage girl).

For all its lush locations (it is set in the South Caucuses) Trassa is bleak to a fault. Some online commentators claimed to discern an anti-male agenda at work in the drama. For sure, if there are any heroes here then they are women and none of the men can really, it seems, be trusted. The female characters, however, are also caught up in the same seediness and exhibit some moral ambiguity.

Anna Nikitichna (foreground) and Karina Razumovskaya. [RuTube.ru]

These shows underscore what Cold Shores has already demonstrated: the Russians can create noir dramas equal to those which come out of Scandinavia.

All three shows venture beyond the standardised Moscow/St Petersburg/Nizhnynovgorod parameters common to Russian film and television. More than that, they hold up a mirror to the complex and murky underbelly of contemporary Russian society. This is quite at odds with the family-values-decency view of Russian life being promulgated by the Putin regime’s soft power.

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

PLAYBOY OF THE EASTERN WORLD: Are the glitzy Moscow highlife DYXLESS films still relevant?

A black drone in the night sky, outside the lit window of a Moscow office block. Shady deals are underway in the interior. A heavy in the company spots the spy craft, pulls out a pistol and fires at it, blowing holes in the window. The drone drops. The credits begin….

Such is the opening to Dyxless 2 . `Wake up`, it seemed to say. `And welcome to 2015! `

Many a Russian film is, if not a goofy slapstick type comedy set in a sunny never-never land , then yet another brawny heroic retread of the `Great Patriotic War`. Within all that there exists ample room for pictures concerned with the here-and-now. Half a decade back, the Dyxless films seemed to provide just that.

The title `Dyxless` – sometimes transliterated into `Duhless` – means `Soulless` (the Russian word `Doosha` with the English suffix `less` grafted onto it). The film represents an adaptation of a novel by Sergey Minaev called `Soulless: the Tale of an Unreal Man` which caused a stir in 2006. The wine trader and broadcaster, now in his mid-forties, had exposed the `Botox. Bentley. Sushi` milieu of the new aspirational Russians. Critics even bracketed him with Bret Easton Ellis, of American Psycho fame.

Lifting the lid on a decadent glamour.

Six years later the screen version, billed as `A film about what really matters in life`, opened the Moscow International Film Festival. Kinoslovo films produced it and the now fifty year old Roman Prygunov (son of the actor Lev Prygunov) directed. The rising matinée idol, the 27 year old Danila Kozlovsky, played the story’s anti-hero, Max. (Koslovsky is known to some Western viewers for his role in The Vampire Academy).

Max Andreev is a 29-year-old orphan who has risen to be a top executive manager of a French/Russian credit company. He is, as he puts it `master of reality` and can get everything money can buy. His life, however, is… `soulless`. That is until he meets Julia (Mariya Andreeva). Julia belongs to an alternative world of anti-capitalist theatrics. For example, her crew set off a paint bomb in a fancy restaurant to protest the meat trade. A love affair results, which causes Max to reconsider his priorities. Can he renounce his old ways?

This consumerist -romp-with-a-conscience provoked enough interest to justify the making of a sequel, released in March of 2015.

Downshifter.

Dyxless 2 begins in Bali where we find Max now living as a surfing hipster, having said farewell to the life of high finance. Soon, however, his old associates track him down and use heavy-handed tactics to lure him back to Moscow. `There are new waves there`, they tell him of the Moscow that has moved on in his absence.

Installed in the Carlton-Ritz on Tverskaya Street, he is introduced to a fellow Bright Young Thing (played by the Serbian actor Milos Bikovic) who insists on Max having a make-over and introduces him to venture capitalism. Max ix back in the soulless world, but he meets Julia again, who is now married and has sold out. He also uncovers a network of corruption and in so doing discovers a new sense of purpose as a champion of ethical business. Can he keep his integrity?

Whilst the first film is an outrageous drama with a love interest, the second one is more of an espionage thriller with a veiled sociopolitical message. Both contain the same hints of dry humour about them, however.

In visual terms they both showcase well photographed scenes of the Russian capital, such as the River Moskva, or the Moscow State University seen from above. This is as befits a director with a background in advertising and rock videos. As for Koslovsky, the critics appreciated his performance enough to award him the Golden Eagle for the best film actor of 2012 for the first one. Dyxless imprinted his image on the national psyche and he has been a much sought after screen lead ever since. (Neither film, by the way, has been made available dubbed into English, but the first one can be found online with English subtitles).

Some have compared the pictures to Wall Street. They share some of the ambivalence about runaway consumerism which that film had, but lack the political punch that the film also delivered in 1987. Dyxless also calls to mind Room at the Top (1958), the classic British morality tale about the pursuit of success. However, the director owes the most to French cinema (to see just how much so, read Russian Film Symposium notes of 2013).Writing in 2013 Elena Murkhortova uncovers the way in which Dyxless `samples` some sequences from the 2007 French film 99 Francs. Of equal interest is her revelation that the character of Max owes much to Eugene Onegin, Pushkin’s immortal anti-hero.

On the domestic end, the film Generation P (2011) explores not so different themes, but in a much more edgy, oppositional manner. Likewise, the notorious Leviathan (2014) takes far more risks by zooming in on the opposite end of the social spectrum.

The Metro newspaper said at the time that there might be a further sequel on the way (after all Dyxless 2 has been the most popular Russian film of this year). Perhaps it would even become a franchise, a bit like the Bond series?

No more from Max.

This was not to be. What we got instead, three years later, was Selfie. Nikolai Khomeriki was the kingpin this time. This 44-year-old talent’s previous motion picture had been Ledokol (Icebreaker) from 2016, a fact-based gritty adventure concerning the fate of a nuclear icebreaker. Selfie too was a more Russian affair: a Moscow film noir set in icy back streets. The protagonist too, whilst affluent, was middle-aged and washed out (depicted well by Konstantin Khabensky). This film was not, nor intended to be, a continuation of the Dyxless cycle, despite the involvement of Minaev, (who wrote the screenplay this time).

You see the Dyxless films now look like period pieces. In a nation beset by sanctions and a stalling economy, where the urban young are becoming indignant about corruption and rigged elections, the glossy magazine world that those films both indulged and satirised already appears less and less relevant. Even so, before we leave the twenty Teens behind, it is worth recalling that these films seemed almost alone in their brief day for at least trying to say something about their own times.

Trailer for Dyxless.

Trailer for Dyxless 2 (English subtitles).

Main image courtesy of DOMKINO TV.

Get closer to the fire and let me tell you about – He Who Turns Out the Light,Zamyachni and The Highway.

Get closer to the fire and let me tell you about – `He Who Turns Out the Light,Zamyachni and The Highway.`