Test for Russian cinema Apparently, the action takes place in Moscow, where a certain Alexei, on whose behalf the narrative is initially conducted, gets acquainted with a preconceived plan with a graduate student of psychology Elvira. It turns out that her mother Anna is also a professional psychologist. And Alexei, whether conducts, or undergoes testing for femininity and masculinity. This is a psychological mystery.
1998 marked the beginning of the end of the period of timelessness for Russian cinema. Timelessness was observed in every sense - the lack of money in principle, ideology, actors, directors, scripts.
“Tests for Real Men” was an attempt to find a formula for the survival of Russian cinema in a market competition in which American genre cinema had a number of competitive advantages: big budgets, special effects, charismatic (often just cute) actors. It seemed that there was almost nothing to counter it.
But Andrei Razenkov, a young director, chose several unmistakable commercial and artistic techniques and figures.
First of all, the writer. It turned out that the new Russian script school did not offer worthy authors, so they turned to an experienced fighter – Valentin Chernykh (on his “conscience”, for example, “Moscow does not believe in tears”). The fact that he worked mainly in a melodramatic way turned out to be very useful. After all, competing with Hollywood in dashing plots and action would be little real, and Chernykh added a love line and moderate dramatic psychologism to the detective plot, which did not require particularly large money expenditures during production, but provided audience interest. The viewer craved almost lost Soviet melodramatism, but introduced into the new conditions of cinematic and social context – an element of brutality (though not in the spirit of “Bandit Petersburg”) in “Tests...” is still present.
Naturally, to implement such a plot scheme of the film required good actors. And here there was a mix of perestroika actors and a very young growth. Fortunately, the first did not lose their talent, and the second failed to spoil things. The first in the film is represented by Alexei Serebryakov, who rarely finds the application corresponding to his talent, again not so often found in the 90s, even less often in the 2000s, Anna Kamenkova, and who emerged after a long absence (actor, at least, because many roles are difficult to call acting) Nikolai Eremenko Jr. and Vitaly Solomin. Much of the film is based on their play, especially on Serebryakova and Kamenkova, perfectly playing the psychological game in good, even sharp dialogue.
It is a shame in this context for the director - he remained not the most popular figure. In fact, Andrey Razenkov not only did not remove anything worthy, but almost nothing at all after “Tests...” Although his work has become a milestone for our film and television to a certain extent. Returned the interest of directors to more or less normal stories with a happy ending and there was an interest in the television format, which, however, almost absorbed a good movie. The film became the forerunner of many domestic series, made with minimal funds, but with maximum return. Therefore, the “television” picture should not confuse anyone – there was really no money, and the result turned out to be quite decent. This was born “gold lived”, but not here and not now.
7 out of 10