If you've read anything by Vladimir Sorokin, who co-wrote the script to this movie, you'll know the feeling. Grotesque outbursts that mock the typical realistic manner of storytelling and the literary cliches associated with the certain "brand" of writing tradition and/or ideology, carefully reconstructed only to be ruined in the absurd.
This movie skims over Russian urban epos of the past 30 years, telling the story of a Soviet automobile, the first VAZ-2101 ever issued, a "people's car" that was in fact a cheap and ugly Fiat knock-off -- and its owners through the time. From a revered status item in the luxury-strapped Soviet reality, to a ridiculed relic from the grim past, through a Politburo member, a physicist, a KGB agent, a prostitute, a gambler, an avant-garde artist, an alcoholic car mechanic, a nouveau riche -- the car suffers through comic and thrilling events of their lives, ruined and restored many times. Think of all the "historical" episodes in Forrest Gump, only woven around a car instead of a retard. Perhaps you'll find a ton of stuff that seem outlandish or impenetrable, but it's instantly recognized by the people who lived through that place and time, as it plays on stereotypes and funny stories etched in their common memory (though, clearly, some background notes are added for the movie to be "exportable"). There are also several brief appearances of well-known cultural figures: Sorokin and Dykhovichny both appear in tiny roles; Petlura, a midget from the art posse, pops all over the movie; the "alcoholic pop" singer Sergey Shnurov plays, well, the drunkard who sticks a knife into the fat businessman. All this spiced with trademark Sorokin's wickedness and fixations (worms, urine, recurring phrases). Excellent stuff for those who dig, or wants to dig, modern Russia and, dare I say, post-modernist humor.
