She's walking in Moscow. After two films slightly above average ("Nanny Needs" and "Nothing Personal") and still unsuccessful "Son", some vague, amorphous, inhibited and as if inanimate, Larisa Sadilova shot her own script (although written with the participation of an experienced Pavel Finn) unexpectedly free and liberated tape "She", which only at first gives the impression of a documentary observation of the anxieties and troubles of Central Asian migrants in Moscow and Moscow region, and sometimes turns out to be filled with a narrative, as if filled with impulsive life. This naturalness, trust and sincerity of intonation, coupled with the free and easy flow on the screen of seemingly familiar and ordinary events, when nothing out of the ordinary happens, and all the acute and exciting problems of foreign existence of guest workers in Russia recede to some extent in comparison with the previous story of the arrival of a young Tajik girl Maya to his fiancé in Moscow, where he himself barely drags his existence on the outskirts of the capital, constantly risking to be caught and suddenly throws such a new poetic dimension into the background.
Yes, strange as it may seem, the second half of the film "She" is shot with a rare feeling of lively and natural cinematic poetry, which arises as if out of nowhere, from a simple and quite ordinary combination of words and gestures, looks and omissions, when the unsaid and only implied is sometimes more important than what was said, and grandiose conversations like nothing more valuable in subtext or casual pauses ... Larisa Sadilova subtly and delicately relates to those interethnic issues about which it is more common to shout loudly and tearfully, to fall into anger and irritation, to clarify relations sharply, rigidly and at the limit of violent emotions. Like the main character, who speaks very little because of her ignorance of the Russian language and because of her shyness, the director of this tape prefers to get away from arrogance and malignancy, excessive fueling of passions, persistent search for the guilty and fleeting judgment over those who “came” from everywhere and prevent us from living quietly and calmly. In Sadilova’s approach to the burning problems of the modern metropolis, there is a sense of dignity and genuine tolerance, not preached to the top of her voice and with the imposition of her only correct opinion, but ripening from the inside and gradually, like that woman who softens her heart and soul to help Maya when she is alone.
And the hopeful ending does not seem far-fetched and illusory. Why not?! The poetic style manifested in the picture even suggests a similar outcome of the initially woeful everyday history.
7 out of 10