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