Ya ne vernus

I saw this in the Cannes market two weeks ago and it has lingered in my mind as one of the better offerings at the festival as a whole. It appears at first to be a gritty piece of social realism in the manner of Ken Loach but gradually evolves, adding touches of humour and wistful fantasy as the protagonists break out of their urban environment and settle into a road-movie routine. A late plot development introduces a blast of harsh reality and paves the way to a bitter-sweet conclusion. Polina Pushkaruk is excellent as Anya, the young woman determined to put her past behind her, and Vika Lobacheva utterly charming as the 13-year-old who plays on her heart-strings. This is accomplished filmmaking, and Ilmar Raag is clearly not a newcomer on the scene. He does not appear to have established himself as a name in the West, but hopefully I Won't Come Back is a first step towards changing that.

This film is so heartbreaking and convincing, that tears came running about the end of this film.

The Title of the film is as much the theme of the main character's journey as it is her enigma. Sterility-of-function-Anya receives a rare, gold medal for her orphanage performance, at the beginning.. For this she can barely smile. We see her fierce soul evidence when she breaks from her peers to preserve her virginity--a strange, rare jewel in this film's harsh, Soviet-style paganism. I'll stop here, as the spirit of this character is much more than mere drama unfolding. Anya's roller coaster ride takes us through the machinations of decades of adult living in mere weeks, touching realities many person's whole lives are too timid to embrace. If you are a typical, Western 'zombie', this is not your movie to watch.

This movie is one of the best I've seen. It's sad, uplifting, beautiful, well acted, has beautiful scenery and it's basically vibrating with humanity.

The Eastern European movie Ya ne vernus (2014) was shown in the U.S. with the title "I Won't Come Back." It was directed by Ilmar Raag. I said the movie was "Eastern European" because the language is Russian, the director is Estonian, and the film includes scenes set in St. Petersburg, and--at least in the script--in Kazakhstan. (I wouldn't recognize any of the geographic locations anyway. Sometimes one of the protagonists--Anya--doesn't know exactly where she is either.)

Watching this film is a unique experience. It never telegraphs where it's going next, and, usually, it goes in a direction that you don't expect.

This movie is really hard to review without giving the plot away. We learn right in the beginning that Anya (played by Polina Pushkaruk) was raised in a orphanage. (We're never told about the conditions in the orphanage.) We first meet Anya when she's receiving a gold medal at graduation.

In the next scene, Anya is a graduate student, giving a lecture. Her supervisor arrives after class, and we learn that she and he are lovers, although he's married, and has a child. Still within the first 15 minutes of the movie, Anya is on the run, pretending to be much younger than she is so that she can stay at a shelter for homeless youth. It's there that she meets young Kristina--played superbly by Vika Lobachova--and that's where the story really begins.

It would have been relatively easy to swing into a traditional road/buddy movie style at this point, and that might have turned into an interesting film. That's not what happens in this movie.

Try to see this movie so that you can learn where director Raag goes with it. It's not an easy ride, but it's an interesting one. We saw this film in the wonderful Dryden Theatre at George Eastman House in Rochester, NY. If you're lucky, you'll find the movie at a similarly excellent venue. If not, it will work almost as well on the small screen.