Dark motives All people of art, stars and artistic bohemian - the noble family of the opera diva Marina Zvereva lives in prosperity, tranquility and closed solitude, not welcoming strangers. Whence then a nightmare, a terrible foreboding, so alarmed the prima donna that she turned to an old friend, seer and interpreter of dreams. As a result, the guests of the Karelian villa of the singer are the grandson of the fortune teller writer-detective Meshchersky and his friend - the former FSB-shnik, and now the head of the security service Kravchenko. Before reaching the place, friends are present at the discovery of the first corpses.
The situation is complicated by related conflicts of household members. The current husband of the hostess Andrey Shipov is much younger than her - this circumstance and his unique voice (male tenor and female soprano) causes contempt and ridicule of Marina's adopted children from one of the previous marriages - Alice and Peter. Shipov’s brother Egor (successfully embodied by Peter Fedorov) is hot and hot-tempered, but seems sincerely devoted to Andrei and Marina. Brother Zvereva Grigory (aristocratic Andrei Rudensky) is experiencing a crisis of actor’s lack of demand. A friend of the house musician Dmitry Korsakov (usually a masterful performance of Alexander Domogarov) hides his misfortunes behind irony and casual fun. The tendency to alcohol exacerbates the conflicting nature of Alice (Anna Banshchikova very reliably conveys the unbalance and nervousness of the character), and the narcissistic intriguer Peter fails to hide dislike for others, especially for foreign guests. There is also an unresolved situation with the huge Austrian inheritance of Zvereva’s penultimate husband, and a maniac who fled from a mental hospital hiding in the surrounding forests, and methods of investigating the searcher Sidorov that are not distinguished by delicacy and humanism.
Gradually, the motives capable of inducing the inhabitants of the house to commit a crime out of greed, jealousy, revenge or envy become clear. The dramatic talent of Lyubov Kazarnovskaya allows her to accurately convey the strength of the character of the royal Beast, her sense of doom and deep suffering from the inability to prevent new victims.
With the undoubted success of the above-mentioned acting works, the authors of the film, apparently, carried away by revealing the characters, failed to correctly dispose of the abundance of storylines and create the necessary atmosphere of increasing tension in the main. Strangers in the house Meshchersky and Kravchenko together with Sidorov seem strangers and in the acting ensemble - typical flat roles of an ordinary detective series. The unevenness of the production is aggravated by the musical dissonance, the poverty of the melody of the background, especially in contrast to the plot-justified opera classics. However, the solid literary basis of the detective still retains the interest of the viewer, which is rewarded with an unobvious final twist.
Discounting the TV series format
6 out of 10
Amazing fact: now, 7 years after the release of the film, Lyubov Kazarnovskaya takes care of Artem Semenov - the owner of a unique voice (at the same time a male tenor and a female soprano).