Des monstres et des hommes

"Pro urodov i lyudej" (Aleksei Balabanov, 1998) is a dark, quixotic look at the earliest days of underground film making in Russia. One of its most interesting features is that the entire film is shot in sepia tone rather than full color, no doubt to emphasize the dreariness of its subject. There are a few outdoor scenes that show us a blue sky, but aside from that the entire film is rendered in that muted sepia color.

The sad-faced, willowy Dinara Drukarova plays Lisa, a young woman who is imprisoned in her own family home and forced to pose nude for the camera, being whipped on screen for the pleasure of a few depraved male customers. After several months of captivity, Lisa escapes and heads for the big city to make a new life for herself... but discovers that the degrading scenes she has been posing for have become a fixation for her.

The title translates into English as "Of Freaks and Men."The "freaks" part comes in when we are introduced to young Siamese twins, joined at the waist.

But as the film progresses, we perceive that the twins are the least "freaky" characters in the film.

Though the scenario is admittedly somber, there is a richness of tone and a strong storyline driving the film forward. We want to know what ultimately happens to the heroine, Lisa, and to the young conjoined twins. "Of Freaks and Men" is justly celebrated for these compelling virtues.

remarkable as portrait of survive of a world. for the images. for the inspired cast. and for the courage. a film about freaks and sins, about appearances and profit, about victims as reflections of cruelty against them. and the perfect music as respiration of story. a puzzle of characters. and the links who defines each. traces of absurd and pornography. and a new era.at first sigh, a Russian Salo. in fact, only sketch of a society after Communism.cold, direct, without masks. or, maybe, a parable. its sense seems be not very important. because it could be a film about viewer. a puzzle for self definition. or a testimony about the secret rooms of few lives.

In an era in which the video shop shelves and TV schedules are dominated by formula-pap, it is refreshing to find a film that stimulates thought for days afterwards. The question is: what's it all about? Is the film commenting on life in pre-revolutionary Russia, on the exploitation of 'freaks', on the corrupting power of pornography, or perhaps none or all of these? I came away from it thinking that the film was primarily about the ways in which film-making can be misused; that it examined the role of those drawn into 'the pornography industry' whether exploiter, exploited, or idealistic artist more interested in technique than subject matter. In thinking about that interpretation I found myself pondering the role of Putilov, seemingly an idealist; would it not be more accurate to describe him as amoral, as the artist determined to remain aloof from the degradation and humiliation required for completion of his projects?

I think the film raises questions about the extent to which the film-maker can remain untarnished by the moral issues that he purports to examine objectively and from a detached perspective. If Putilov agrees to co-operate in the filming or photography of the naked, frightened Siamese twins or of the whipping of a young woman can he really escape responsibility for their plight? Is he really entitled to walk away with his reputation intact? The immoral Johann is easier to condemn: he is a sadist who will kill at the drop of a hat to preserve his way of life and business. A jury would take much longer to decide its verdict on Putilov.

OF FREAKS AND MEN is a constantly interesting story and film-------very well photographed---------about a strange, psychopathic pornographer who makes movies of women being whipped by a "nanny" for the underground market at the turn of the century. The film is shot in a sepia tone to give a nice authenticity to the proceedings. If you've seen photographs from the fin-de-siecle, you realize what marvelous recreations of those romantic-------though risqué--------photographs the filmmakers have achieved. Many of them look very much like the photographs of Julia Margaret Cameron----------one of the finest photographers working after the Civil War, who specialized in photographing women in dream like, highly romantic, almost spiritual scenes. She never did photos like this, of course, but the same care was taken in the art direction of this film.

But most interesting of all is the psychological workings of the minds of the very respectable middle class characters who find themselves drawn to this seedy business against their wills, but are quite willing to pursue their newfound inner freedom after the pornographer has left. This is one of Image Entertainment's most artistic releases for 2001. More please.

Jay F.

One of the disadvantages of being an Englishman living in Amsterdam, of course, is that the linguistic barriers impose some pretty severe limitations on ones cinematic diet. However, given that the choice between watching films like this and the likes of the 'The Phantom Menace' would have yielded the same conclusion whatever language it was to be viewed in, I am pleased to say that my embryonic graspings of the Dutch language were sufficient to cope in this particular case. Whether this can be put down to simplistic subtitling, the succinct approach to dialogue of Russian films, or director Alexei Balabanov's grasp of the fact that in the hypothetically visual culture of cinema, actions speak louder than words, is debatable. Whatever; I came, I saw, and I enjoyed.

Director Alexei Balabanov, whose 1997 debut was 'Brother' ('Brat'), has here created a fascinating tale around the subject of pornography in turn of the century St Petersberg. Johann (Sergei Makovetsky), a purveyor of salacious erotic autochromes of staged flagellation scenes, along with assistant Victor, worms his way into the lives of two noble families, drawing adopted Mongolian conjoined twins Kolja and Tolja and the delicately beautiful Lisa (Dinara Drukarova) into his enterprise as subjects for his short erotic films.

From the early blue-tinted scenes detailing the birth and background of the twins, set to a soundtrack all but silent save for the presence of hisses and scratches, to the vivid invocation of a feverish preoccupation with all things sexual welling beneath the austere trappings of the Russian bourgeoisie, Balabanov lyrically invokes the spirit of the times. 'Of Freaks and Men' is nothing if it is not beautiful and evocative, crisply photographed in monochrome by cinematographer Sergei Astakhov. There is dark quirky humour here, and a host of eccentric periphery characters, from the lustily compliant serving maid, to a blind wife, and Johann's snaggle-toothed henchman. Visually the film is consistently rich and fascinating.

The premise, of course, is guaranteed to offend the more conservative of viewers. The numerous whipping scenes as well as the portrayal of Johann's treatment of the twins are sure to prove distasteful to those approaching with a more polically correct viewpoint, though the studied art direction and period stylistic veneer distances the viewer to some extent. This, after all is a film about the origins of pornography, and it is not really pornographic in itself. It also touches on a fear of technology (in this case, the emerging medium of cinema), and how that new technology can either empower or enslave. Despite the rather flaccid denouement, and at times seeming slightly overblown in its characterisation of Johann (whose dominance is more usually manifested by means of a handgun rather than a camera), the intriguingly original premise and stunning sepia-toned cinematography should prove ample reward for the curious viewer. After all, there are not a lot of Russian films getting shown over here at the moment.