Very female, very boring movie. Even in the weak competition 'Russian Premieres' MIFF-2023 it was far from the best picture. For example, ' Montevideo Unit' clearly stronger in all film aspects, but for some reason ' Edge of the broken moon...' gave the main prize of this block of the festival.
Even without looking at the credits, you could immediately guess that the film was written by a woman and directed by a woman. No sexism, just intuition. The screenwriter was Natalia Meshchaninova, directed by Svetlana Samoshina. Both worked without any help. Alas, too presumptuous of them.
Moscow journalist Sasha (Anna Shepeleva) makes a sapsan trip from Moscow to St. Petersburg, postponing the work of workers for the sake of family affairs. Her whole family is a toxic mother (Tolstoganova) and a younger sister (Masha Lobanova) of puberty. The conflict between mothers and children always ends with the flight of the latter. In this situation, you can not do without the help of Sasha - after all, the gap between the generations is not yet of a huge scale, the level of trust is much higher.
After such a setup, the screenwriter Meshchaninova had a huge choice of development of the situation. But at each turning point of the plot, she chooses the most boring road.
Thriller / detective about the search for a missing child with interspersed family squabbles? No, it is too formatted, banal (according to Meshchaninova), not 'festival'. It is better that we put family squabbles and personal female pains to the fore, and think about the viewer last. The whole plot works only on the idea of finally clarifying the relationship and dotting the family drama, and the eldest with her mother has even more open gestalts.
Even the melodramatic line between the heroine Shepeleva and the brutal hero Artem Bystrov did not work out. All fatal passions are extremely vulgar, Meshchaninova stubbornly tries not to slide into the Domashny TV channel, but she can not offer an alternative. The hero of Bystrov, the neighbor is a master - a hero-function. His business is to look for the younger, to console (but not to love) the older, and then in this world of women's quarrels and confessions he does not belong at all.
Another line could be the journey of the youngest to the American father & #39, whose death her mother lied to her. But it would be a completely different movie: a completely different scale and a completely different budget. Too big for the winner of the Russian Premier MIMFF. And the finale 'Moon...' maybe, after some time will be taught in various film schools, as an example of how not to write the finals. Extend here only acting work, and not so much Shepeleva, as Victoria Tolstoganova.
5 out of 10