The shallow river of life "Dnepr" is a typical love story. The official synopsis from the authors of the film:
The main character Cat parted with a girl, an eccentric young person, who does not completely share his views on life. After a flashy and exhausting quarrel, she drops him out of the car on the go, circumstances lead him to the hotel. In his field of view is a stranger. The only thing that unites them is the river.
Shapiro, who directs a non-profit, underground, arthouse et cetera product, of course, tried to stuff more hidden meanings and meanings into the film. So, “Dnipro” is not only (and not so much) a film “about love” between a man and a woman. If you take the characters, then between them there is not even a hint of any feelings or at least an involuntary passion. Rather, it is a film about the relationship between the sexes in general. About "love per se." The love through which life takes place. About love, which manifests itself in a million feelings up to indifference through hatred. Including here we are talking about the love of alcohol, tactile sensitivity and luxurious life.
But this film is much more not about the heroes, but about the director himself. This is Shapiro's love movie:
Towards your profession. A quarter of the film, the voiceover tells how cool it is to watch people and write off characters from them, and from situations - scenario moves.
To philosophy. Once Shapiro rushed with the idea to make a series of films about great philosophers. The idea seems to be unrealized, at least I have seen only one such film. Meanwhile, in the “Dnipro” the main character is always philosophizing. His interviewee is not very interesting, we, to the credit of the Director, a little more interesting. But we, going to the movie, were ready for an abundance of not too meaningful dialogue, right?
Cinematography. It is felt that Shapiro with a special mood staged the episode in the cinema of the hotel, where the characters with a bottle of tequila enjoy precoitus pleasures. At the same time, the "Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" is shown in the hall. I don’t know what this film has to do with it, but Shapiro’s desire to show it is revealing in itself. A kind of yearr insert, which does not oblige to anything, to a certain extent breaks the narrative, but allows you to say what came to mind right now. And "just now." Shapiro felt tenderness for cinema.
• To the Dnieper. It is no secret that Shapiro is the most famous Ukrainian director in Kiev. As critics like to write, the city has a full-fledged hero, character, character. This time Kiev is a city on the Dnieper for him.
The latter is the main leitmotif of the picture, the Dnieper as a river of life. Again, the director of the film:
“Dnipro” tells the story of a chance meeting of a couple who, according to all life stereotypes, would never meet. One night in the life of an eccentric girl and a mysterious man is squeezed into 75 minutes of screen time. Each episode of their communication is interspersed with shots of field shootings of the majestic river. The plot develops in the rhythm of the flow of the Dnieper. The incipient interest of the heroes to each other is accompanied by shots of the sources of the river on the Valdai hill. The intensity of passion is like the stormy Dnieper rapids. The climax and denouement of the plot rhymes with the confluence of the river into the Black Sea. The Dnieper is represented here by the main philosophical leitmotif, a metaphor of life.
This is what it looks like in the movie:
"The nascent interest of the heroes to each other is accompanied by shots of the sources of the river on the Valdai hills." - Hero Cat "sit in the ear" of a stranger. She's ignoring him as much as possible. “Interest” begins to emerge when he shares alcohol with her.
“The intensity of passion is like the stormy Dnieper rapids.” Drunk hugs and monologues about the “obsession – the last sex in life”. Light surface petting.
"The culmination and denouement of the plot rhymes with the confluence of the river into the Black Sea." After eating grilled vegetables and ice cream, as well as another portion of philosophy, the heroes finally undress. There will be sex after the movie ends.
The footage of Shapiro’s chronicle interrupts the plot really shows a majestic river and that’s why the parallel between the river and the “heat of passions” looks interesting and surprising at the same time. There is nothing “great” in the story. The "passions" raging between the heroes have nothing sublime, something beyond the ordinary. The night brought them casual sex and nothing more.
Much more important in the film is not the footage of the chronicle with the Dnieper, but the Dnieper, which was shot by Shapiro himself. In the picture there is a lot of calm and quiet river water. It is the river of life that carries heroes. Today’s Dnieper is the ersatz of that river from the chronicle. “Passion” between the characters of the film just shows: the surrounding reality, which so likes to observe the voiceover, is able to offer the scriptwriter stories are far from Shakespearean.
Alexander Shapiro’s Dnieper has long been a “majestic river”. On its Dnieper is the hotel "Bakkara".
7 out of 10