Little-known adaptation of the play by Nikolai Erdman “Suicide”. With a great cast. The chicness is not only in the fact that famous Soviet actors participate in the film, but also there is some experimentation, because Cleopatra Maximovna is played by Elena Stepanenko.
The screenwriter of the film “Cloud-Paradise”, released a year later than this adaptation, I think, was inspired by the play of Nikolai Erdman, because the plots are slightly similar. In both films, two main characters, two kind of “little men”, wanting to stir up something in their lives, to arrange a small domestic riot, openly report that they have made a very important decision that changes absolutely everything in their usual life. In Suicide, it’s actually suicide; in Cloud Paradise, it’s just a sudden decision to leave a bored town. And in both cases, the public in the face of tenants-neighbors festively accompanies the main character, wishing him all the best, while absolutely noticing how deeply the hero already regrets his words. And I would be glad to refuse, but against the crowded mass of society, which has done a lot and spent a lot on these “wires”, the hero is unable to say anything.
What does the movie “Suicide” look like? This, in addition to excellent acting, and dialogue. A sea of dialogue. And they don't seem to have been much reworked and likely follow the play's original dialogues. The speeches of the characters are filled with rich images, the vocabulary of everyone is inexhaustible, many phrases, if not from the original play, then at least from the film adaptation of 1990, could go to the people, because the wit of phrases is visible to the naked eye. But, alas, at the time of writing the review on Kinopoisk, the film was evaluated by only 70 people. Despite the excellent literary component of the film, as well as the magnificent cast, the film loses in fame to the same “Cloud-Paradise”. But this is the cross of the films of the early 90s - most of them few people know, not before the cinema was then.
8 out of 10