Not melodrama, not comedy, not tragedy The film "About Him" immediately, without even looking at it, can be condemned for the title. Why? Try to Google a movie about him! So many unexpected things come up!
So it starts with a triangle. He is an artist, she is his wife. The wife leaves her husband because the other is a producer and makes her a star. But the talented beauty is torn apart by two love: love for fame and money and love for her ex-husband. The situation is well known to everyone for a long time. For exquisiteness, add another daughter from her first husband, who considers the producer to be the father. And the real dad goes to the monastery in the most literal sense. He also takes a vow of silence. From such a beginning would come a great snotty novel. Only in the first minutes, a woman torn by love dies. And the genre of melodrama flies into the trash.
The plot is based on the escape of producer Denis (Sergei Zhigunov, who is also the producer of the film “About Him”) from “business partners” who demand debts. Capturing Muska - the unborn daughter of a beloved woman and her exotic nanny - a black-haired Cuban Dolores - Denis makes legs from the first throne to the homeland of a girl and a dead wife. It seems that he travels on the train for a short time, but falls into such a dreary province that it is difficult to describe. In fact, this is where most of the film will take place.
In the town concentrated expressed all the horror of Muscovites before Zamkady. Russia beyond the finite metro is a series of small, terrible ruins. Nothing works, no one works, people—small and stupid—prefer to idle at strikes rather than do business. Saleswomen, telegraphists with the appearance of muddle-headed people are hesitantly demanding that the factories be given to the workers. The parody of the opposition is more than obvious, but we will leave this point on the conscience of the filmmakers.
The attitude of the fugitives to the surrounding world is expressed in one line by the girl Muska: “I do not want to live here!” Truly: a terrible dream of a Muscovite. People are dark, superstitious and terribly far from iPhones. And above all, the poor! And that's also a flaw. They shout for rights, and then they are sold for a crumpled piece of paper with the magic lettering “dollar”. And the producer sprinkles a generous handful. The longest-serving crank is a cop who has to requisition a bike from a boy because there is nothing to ride on a mission. It’s hard to watch these scenes as a resident of a small town. And not because “the truth of the eye hurts.” It is a shame to realize that more than 10 million of your fellow citizens living in a parallel universe behind the magical wall of the Moscow ring, see you and your house in this way.
Fortunately, these scenes, shot extremely well, are still not the basis of the film. But what is this very basis is quite difficult to understand. Prologue-melodrama, set-up-action, cynical laughter over the province - all this is more of a screen, which the author gradually pushes aside. And we see that the producer Denis is running not from someone, but after someone. Or something.
The secret of cooking any dish is simple: you need to put just as much as you need. So that nothing is small or in excess. Vyacheslav Kristofovich managed to find the right proportions of comedy, drama and tragedy. Humor in the movie is good, though, almost always a little bitter. It mainly arises in the course of dialogues between Denis and Cuban nanny Dolores. Also, a large share of the laughter in the hall awakens a naive slut cop. Closer to the finale, dramatic scenes push the comedy into the background. The conversation of the girl with the real father causes a lump in the throat, which does not go away almost until the end of the action.
At the same time, everything in the film is imbued with the spirit of minimalism. And the nature on which the plot develops (except for a few scenes in the capital). And technical design: just a couple of computer special effects, standard camera work, no artistic bells and whistles. And actors who are few and who are almost in full composition are not known to anyone.
The only exceptions are Sergey Zhigunov, who plays the main role, and, perhaps, Andrei Kaikov from “6 frames” is a eccentric policeman. The rest are “dark horses” with big tasks. Vitaly Egorov plays the monk-silent Seraphim - he is also the father of Muska. The hero has to make a painful choice several times, and each time silently. There is only one word in the whole movie: No. I won’t say that his game was amazing, but watching the silent dialogue was a pleasure. Involuntarily, I wanted to see more silent roles in modern Russian cinema.
The Cuban nanny is played by a native Muscovite (!) Lisa Martinez. To me, the Latin American expression looks a little phony, but its wild almost animal and blind love for the child evokes strong feelings. The child, by the way, also emits at least two powerful emotional shots. In my opinion, the young actress can shoot. By the way, her name is Eva Barats, and she is the youngest daughter of the notorious Leonid Barats from the Quartet I.
Director Kristofovich does not shy away from some exquisite artistic techniques. So the ending stylistically repeats the prologue and, as it were, symbolically rings the plot ... but, alas, gentlemen-comrades, by wailing “a”, I cannot make you happy “b”. Because spoiler, spoiler, spoiler. Take a look for yourself.
7 out of 10