An old tale on the new way A Russian film that won gold at the Berlin Festival is a curious thing. So much so that even a poster resembling a collection of vanilla selfies didn’t bother me. It was still worth thinking about looking at.
The plot of the film tells about a simple provincial girl. The story is calm, in the spirit of an ordinary festival film. The first few minutes either because the plot was really interesting, or the hopes of finding something worthy of a golden lion in it, the strangeness of the main character and the people who surround her caused some interest. Until the action moved from the province to the capital. That's where the plot begins to stoop in place, and the glamour blows out of all the cracks, and the vanilla of the main character, still hidden, begins to manifest itself.
The main character of this failed Russian “Amelie” is a simple girl who came to the capital and, like the mermaid Andersen, met her prince there. But no matter how much she tries to look like Amelie or a mermaid, the only thing she does well is to be a vanilla. She doesn't drink coffee sitting on a windowsill thinking about it. But he smokes cigars on which his name is written, secretly sighs about him, follows him everywhere, invents problems for himself and him, makes a naive fool of himself to please him (or really is, and then the situation becomes even worse). And in the end, she will think that he also fell in love with her, and will be very offended when he, not understanding her “direct and open hints”, will cheat on her with another girl (with whom, incidentally, he dated the whole film).
The other characters look very interesting. The businessman selling the moon, the woman without legs and even the girl of the main character who came off the cover of a glamorous magazine – they all look alive, they want to empathize. However, the main character will appear in the frame, as from the screen begins to pour so many pink snot that there is a thought that the script of this film was written by a teenage girl, watched “Twilight”.
The plot of the film is frankly weak. All the key turns he explains in one word – simple. In the fairy tale, such plot twists were explained by the miracles and magic inherent in all fairy tales, but since the film for the sake of realism abandoned fabulous magic, all this looks stupid and unnatural. Even the death of the Little Mermaid, the director explains "just, it happens."
The only positive side of the film is humor. Simple everyday jokes that at least slightly disperse boredom. A week after watching the whole film, only the outrage from “just so happens” and a sobbing beer mug passing by the company of alcoholics remained in memory.
This film does not carry any idea or wise thought, does not raise social themes, does not make you think, does not even bring pleasure from watching. In this scenario, one can only wonder why he was given a golden bear.
4 out of 10
Original