Mining for shadows “Production for the Shadow” is the work of Astryuk according to his own original script, in the development of which F. Sagan took part, which greatly affected the style and general mood of the film, it was under the impression of her prose that Astryuk apparently created the tape. Nevertheless, the reduced level of drama, the television aesthetic, manifested in the abundance of static middle plans, the redundancy of the text - all this makes the structure of the picture flabby and devoid of the inspired poeticity that distinguished Life.
The torment of the heroine between her husband and lover looks somehow ridiculous, without the tragic torment of the characters of Antonioni or Truffaut devastated by passions. The history of cinema knows many extremely tense scenes that convey amorous suffering, but almost all of them occur either in silence or in hysteria. Verbalization on the screen of experiences of a love nature, as a rule, simplifies and vulgarizes them. Cases of well-constructed and played verbal love dramas are isolated (“Mommy and Girl” Estash is one of them).
In addition, the behavior of the heroes of “Production for the Shadow” is somehow petty-bourgeois, marked by the seal of pampered self-admiration, masochistic self-digging. Only Girardo’s play somewhat atones for the numerous shortcomings of the tape (the rest of the actors look lifeless extras on its background), the image created by her perfectly fits into the context of Sagan’s prose, which replicates the same autobiographical heroine from book to book. Girardo makes her a broken, insecure, in need of men and at the same time frustrated intellectual.
Numerous phobias make her life unbearable, neuroticism combined with selfishness and her own desire to keep the fleeting - the basic characteristics of the internal state of modern emancipated women. They constantly experience the tragic situation of the refinement of interpersonal ties, suffer from the consequences of the sexual revolution, which legitimized randomness and ridiculed monogamous constancy. A woman needs strong bonds with others more than a man, suffering when they break or become fragile. Girardo makes her character impetuous, nervous, impulsive, experiencing tremendous stress from the additional obligations that emancipation has placed on her shoulders.
Despite the monotony of the narrative, dialogues replete with egoistic self-exploration, the general helplessness of the directorship, which is not able to link the disparate structural elements into a concise whole, the film is an interesting social document that registers the increase in alienation between the sexes in the era of the sexual revolution that is just beginning. Sagan’s prose and the film Astryuka, inspired by her, in this sense can be perceived as a prophecy of future troubles.