La ragazza d'autunno

... and seared by the cold - this magnificently performed and beautifully filmed piece of cinema reveals the challenges faced by two young women in post war Leningrad. Damaged and psychologically disturbed by their experiences, shell shocked from the battles, real and imagined, battles they would never have aspired to fight some years earlier, while surrounded and enveloped by uncertainty, indignity, poverty and despair.

This movie is an intense and thoughtful exploration of relationships between survivors of war. The desire to find meaning and love and connection drive people to do beautiful and desperate things, and in the end to find either peace or conflict within depending on what they can accept and create within their minds. Beautifully acted.

You could expect a 1945 Leningrad setting to be joyful after the Russian victory over Nazis, but writer/director Kantemir has caught the downside in Beanpole. It's a deeply moving, complicated story about two former soldiers who tackle the melancholy and desperation of victors with no spoils---just ruined buildings and crushed hopes.

This melancholy drama centers on two women: Iva (Viktoria Miroshnicenk) and Masha (Vasilisa Perelygina), who attempt to bring meaning to their lives after the devastation. Mostly it's about Masha's attempt to have a life within her, mainly a baby. Her first baby died at the hands of Iva, who now owes Masha a baby.

Through a series of lengthy scenes and shots (sometimes they are too long), the audience is drawn into the emotional needs of the protagonists set against the needs of the other Leningrad citizens to gain happiness and hope after a ravaging war. The scenes between Iva and Masha are lovingly and deeply felt as Masha navigates getting a replacement baby and Iva resists the machinations to do so.

Given the wide scope of WWII, Beanpole is a small-scale drama, whose intensity comes from the characters rather than the setting. Love is the operative word, married to hope to make a satisfying character study in a drawn-out drama of human longing, regardless of the time period.

I just think that people who are not from Russia or not from a former USSR republic don't understand how deep and important this film is. we are (russians and ex-soviets) are so used to the glorification of WW2, but this film doesn't do it. no, it shows how bleak and joyless the life after war is and it may not seem so groundbreaking for the western viewer but it is for me. also Kantemir Balagov isn't even 30 years old and he is a master of the craft alreasy. it means something.

This film set in post-war USSR is beautifully shot and superbly acted. Every scene is a work of art that reglects the melancholic mood of that generation. Not a light watch, but extremely rewarding.