vinogradovh

It's a story about a young woman, who has everything what others are only dreaming about: money, good looks and a peaceful marriage. But she's disappointed - life is boring for her. She can't find anything in common with her girl-friends form school-times, with her husbands colleagues nor with her husband, who's a rich civil servant/businessman. She's fed up of those selfish and stupid girls, who stick themselves to some old and fat rich businessman or politician. She hates grandiose parties, where people are gossiping. One day her husband goes to a trip.. she's left alone at home and decides to reconstruct her fireside. Her girl-friend recommends her a guy for that job..

Well, firstly I have to say, that I have seen many Russian films from the middle of 40 until the end of 70-ies, but only some films from the 90's, mostly document and non from the new, 21th century. So I was very curious about this film - Russian film of year 2002. The film takes place in Moscow, Russian capital. Even though the film action mostly takes place in one flat, we can see some nice views to Moscow also. So.. I didn't know WHAT to expect and I was nicely surprised. The idea of the film and the progress is quite unexcpectable and the end - totally out-of-a-blue. I would say that Yevgeni Sidikhin's (the guy who comes to reconstruct the fireplace) role was a little bit disturbing sometimes. Mostly I liked the film, especially the first part. Not one of my top-movies, not at all, but better than most of average romantic-action movies. PS! As far as I know it was the first film for the directors(Sergey Ginzburg, Aleksandr Strizhenov).

The main character is a 18-year-old blond girl Angela. Her passion is to draw comics. After graduating from high-school she's going to look for some adventures... So Angela spontaneously takes up the idea of a Japanese DJ Yamamoto she meets at her graduation party ... and flies off to TOKYO! Everything she sees, she expresses in her drawings.. but some bad things are going on at her new working place... Someone has been murdered... Angela draws and draws... soon it seems, that reality and comics are mixed up.. where's the line between?

Even though the artistic and technical side of mixing comics and "real-life" was interesting and even though it was shot in Tokyo..I have to tell, that I didn't like this movie. Max 3 points in 10 point scala. And those points are for the artistic side! And I'm sad, because I expected quite a lot from this film. So what was the problem for me? It was too slow, it was too naive and I'm sorry, but I wasn't so very thrilled about the actors. I have to tell you, that only one actor, Filip Peeters, (a "bad guy") left an impression for me.. I felt cold and even a little bit scared when I saw him on screen, so he LEFT an impression. The others didn't. By the way.. after I saw the film I remembered a film which I saw exactly one year ago.. last autumn -"Ruang rak noi nid mahasan"/"Last Life in the Universe" by Pen-Ek Ratanaruang (Thailand, Japan; 2003). They are not comparable.

People who like slow-on-going movies, a little bit romance plus "murder to be solved" and actually, a totally out-of-a-blue ending films, should go and see it.