tmdaines

Shoddy shaky camera-work from the get go points to this being a frustrating experience throughout. The plot is wafer-thin. Girl moves to new area, falls in with the wrong crowd, happens to come across something she shouldn't, and is forced to keep quiet. The characters all come across as clichés of teenage angst. There's the bad egg, the good guy at heart who has fallen in with the wrong crowd, the big fat oaf and the girl who feels as if the whole world is crumbling in on her. The scene at the bookshop where books and reading is made out to be the antithesis of teenage cool is cringeworthy beyond belief. There's nothing to recommend this on.

The setup is fairly simple, during a violet domestic dispute about stolen money that serves as the film's prologue, a water pipe bursts. The whole scene underscores what is to come: a tale of a corrupt society teetering on the brink of disaster socially, economically and politically.

The hero of the film, Dima, the "durak" (fool) of the title of the film, is a bright young plumber on the way up in the world. After inspecting the damage, he soon realises that the burst pipe is merely evidence of a much larger issue: the entire block of flats is falling apart and will do so in 24 hours. While this should have been rectified during regular renovations of the building, the funds to do so were skimmed off the top by the local head of the housing organisation.

In response, Dima goes right to the very top of the provincial town in an attempt to save the lives of the occupants. Is anyone going to be motivated to act, however, if they have already been bleeding the system dry until now? Perhaps covering their own backs will prove the only motivation.

A brilliant film: one where you truly don't know whether to laugh or cry. From my time in Ukraine though, I dread just how accurate this slice of modern small town Russian life is.