Escort — a place much better not to return I will open it to you, I will open all the seams - see:
Everyone who sewed me up forgot something inside.
Just be sterile when you dive.
Let's see how you screw up together.
And I'll stay.
One...
© Aigel, track "The Monster."
You want me? Take it.
© "Gerda", dir. Natalia Kudryashova.
In the biography of the young Russian director Boris Akopov there are amazing contrasts. Originally from the harsh Balashikha, Boris, being a ballet artist, at some point changed his profession, entering VGIK, and since then he has been shooting author's films. His first modest brainchild is a short diploma meter “Paradise” about the unpredictable drunkenness of two men who failed to turn into a full-fledged friendship. His first serious, big work is the winner of the Kinotavr 2019, another bow to the vague nineties, “Bull”. In both cases, there is something to praise, and there is something to complain about. What is the next step in the creative path of the debutant?
“Kat”, unlike “Bull”, is less noticeable and almost not publicized drama without open nostalgia for the past. The theme of escort in the domestic segment of cinema and television in recent years was often heard: take at least inexhaustible series “Containers”. But if there you roughly know what to prepare for, then the surprise happens at the stage of acquaintance with the poster, trailer and annotation: Katya is not just anyone, but a new mother in debt, who continues to cook in a difficult business for adults. I touched on Cannes, the exhaust - on a special mention of the jury of the MIFF. Whatever the awards, the director himself clearly did not unravel the potential of his creation, as the main character could not fully realize the joy of motherhood, exchanging it for constant anxiety for his daughter and the nightmarish instability of his own life.
Until the finale, the film goes on rickety rails, jumping, then landing. Cat functionally jumps from location to location, acquainting us with various inhabitants of the Russian land (alas, here is a purely metropolitan), as the characters of the school classics were introduced to her – from unpretentious peasants from the Nekrasov “Who in Russia lives well” to a retired official Chichikov from Gogol’s “Dead Souls”. She comes across rich, and theatergoers, and singers, and marginalized, and occasional princes on dead horses, ready to fall in love at the click of a condom. Somewhere in the back, a one-year-old child mooing, left to rattle in the pimp's lair. The clock is ticking, the master’s patience is not eternal, and the priorities are completely different. Katya is doomed to wander around the sidelines and apartments to pay the bills. Sometimes it is possible to fix a charming similarity with reality: Boris fragmentarily classifies human types, constructing their behavioral line exactly as it could manifest itself outside the cinematic language. That is why the narrative, very bland and boring, still manages to drag the viewer into the rotten and chilly world on the other side of the screen: it is quite appropriate balancing with expectations, a way to make the fear and excitement of the “night butterfly” feel before the unknown. And the unknown is about to lurk around the corner - in the smoke and intoxication in the midst of depraved companies, behind the dim lights of balls and masquerades or, look, alone with a lonely impotent.
The restless, lively camera of Peter Buslov distorts the space, squeezing the boundaries of the frame with an optical lens, step by step pursuing the heroine, exposing the mess and fornication, but even she cannot save the situation, because the main trouble is in the script. Taking a prostitute instead of a racehorse and riding it through the layers of society, failing to isolate anything articulate from this journey is not an option. The dilemma is painfully simple: the girl who became a mother is forced to return to her old craft. The inability to break with the past leaves her behind, sharing with a child – a harbinger of a happy future, a lever for positive change. The little daughter is only a bargaining chip, obliged to awaken the mother to responsibility and struggle for higher ideals. However, the conflict does not develop, choosing to slow down at every opportunity. Why is there a line with motherhood, since it is so difficult to prescribe it, and it is easier to simply cross out? If we see a slice of Moscow society through the eyes of a tired escort, why not leave the main engine of the plot to work off debts? Akopov confronts two parallel, autonomously existing worlds, neither of which, being neither a prostitute nor a mother, really does not know. But through the prism of their intercourse, they try to talk about what they know or at least have seen in a glimpse – such as the theatrical behind the scenes or the awkward contact of men with available women.
All this gives the author a curious enthusiast who dared to dance ballet in the holy dens. It is useless to look for echoes of the reincarnation of Gogol or Nekrasov: writers understood from whose face they broadcast reality, and therefore they created in proportion not only to the plan, but also to the very nature of things. Akopov’s view is more superficial, clichéd, locked in a one-man paradigm. His characters are the same. Cat is the same. The “roll-field”, rushing by a wave of circumstances from shore to shore and until the last does not take control of the situation into their own hands. And when the time comes for decisive action (after, of course, a whole bunch of wasted chances), there is nothing better than turning the conflict into a black joke. Like, I wanted to do it properly, but it turned out so stupid that I climbed into the loop.
To reach an adequate artistic statement from Boris Akopov completely failed. But it turned out to conduct a “sightseeing tour of the lush places of Moscow with the monsters inhabiting it,” as Gia Sichinava correctly put it in a review for KinoAfisha. True, it is also about a third or a quarter – but nothing, at least the demo version, we are accustomed to endure. And, well, really lucky to bring to light aspiring actress Anastasia Kuvshinova. In the rest, "Kat" is rather an annoying absurdity that has lost all its great potential, rather than a deft creative rise worthy of attention.
4 out of 10