I watched the new film by Oksana Bychkova “Nina”, 2023, shot by her from a script written together with Lyubov Mulmenko. I have seen several of her films – Peter FM, Plus One, Another Year, I liked them and liked this film, although in genre it is a melodrama, which I am not particularly fond of.
Nina (Yulia Peresild) has long lived in Moscow, works as a speech therapist, she has a good husband Vova (Kirill Kyaro) and a small son, everything seems to be in order, when suddenly her life is broken by a call as if from the past - her former lover Ruslan (Eugene Tsyganov) calls her from Tbilisi and asks her to come, he is seriously ill, dies and wants to say goodbye, although it has been very many years since their separation. At first she is not going to go, but then reconsiders her decision and flies to Tbilisi, her husband does not mind, he trusts her. Arriving in Tbilisi, with whom, as it turns out, are connected just years of relations with Ruslan, she walks with him, rejecting any hints of restoring intimacy between them, constantly corresponds with her husband and every evening talks with him on Skype. She came to say goodbye not so much to Ruslan as to her past. In Tbilisi, she accidentally meets a nice young man Leri (Andro Chichinadze) at the market. A few days of communication with Ruslan finally pushes her away from him, when his true completely selfish intentions, manifested in a rather boorish spirit, emerge. Suddenly, her relationship with her husband worsens. After that, she decides on an action that seems frivolous. Everything, unfortunately, ends very badly, although nothing seemed to foreshadow such an end.
Do not forget the simple truth about which Shpalikov spoke in his famous poem, more than once convinced that it is so, and in this case the ashes did not look very good:
Unfortunately or fortunately,
The truth is simple:
Never come back.
The old places.
Even if the ashes
Looks good.
Not finding what we're looking for
Not you, not me.
The film, of course, is absolutely female, with such a purely female presentation of material, nevertheless it looks good, the actors also play well, so if anyone is interested, it is worth watching.