Alain Delon doesn’t Drink Eau de Cologne

And this drink isn’t favored by his screen heroes either, among which are hired killers (Le Samourai by J.-P.Mellvile, Traitment de choc by R.Davis, etc.). Actor and director V.Shilovsky decided to try on one of the established Delon’s roles. In Deadline Shilovsky plays a liquidation professional making Mafia people uncomfortable. His next victim becomes respectable, and sets out to destroy the superbosses. Shilovsky’s hero kills a “client”, then wants to be out of the game, but…

All in all, the standard plot of Deadline doesn’t shine with specially dramatic passages. It’s not actually bad, though, until Shilovsky tries to give the actions of his character a psychological basis. As a child, he saw during the war how some died of hunger and others enjoyed a glut of apples and peahens. That’s when he began to hate the masters of life. Therefore, he is not an everyday hired gun, but a man with firm ideological principles – the killer-avenger. This is another Russian attempt to complicate things, to make a murderer not a murderer but some sort of victim of the social environment.

Pity, but there is none of Delon’s charm in Shilovsky’s hero. And he drinks, alas, eau de Cologne instead of bourbon and Napoleon brandy…

Primitive Scripting

The plot of B.Grigoriev’s The Confession of the Mistress is simple: the Mafia kidnaps a businessman, one of the so-called New Russians, and demands money from his mistress and companion. A police detective tries to free the hostage with the woman’s help.

Most of the movie takes place in the heroine’s gorgeous apartment, where she and detective are sitting beside the phone on which criminals call her from time to time. Under these conditions only excellent directorial effort and well-developed acting could have saved the movie. But neither M.Zudina nor M.Zhigalov manages to bring life to the primitive script scheme. Their characters are monotonous and unattractive, their dialogue is boring. The action develops very slowly, and by the middle of the movie only determined perseverance keeps one from walking out for a breath of fresh air.

Belief in a Right to Kill

Kidnapping themes are as common in Russian cinema as American. The suspense movie The Nonhuman tells of the kidnapping of a 13-year-old boy whose mother had a high office in City Hall. Contrary to some other versions of such events, director Y.Ivanchuk puts the main accent not on details of investigation, chases and fights, but on the family’s moral situation. The kidnapping is presented as a harsh revenge for the mother’s sins (bribery, corruption, lying). Here the talented actress L.Gurchenko had material for creation of an interestingly complicated character. She played it, however, for half its potential, without the psychological truth she brought to The Five Nights (1979) by N.Mikhalkov and Sibiriada (1980) by A.Konchalovsky. S.Bragarnik, who performed a similar rile in V.Aristov’s drama Devil , managed to create a more convincing and interesting character.

The criminal in Devil was scarier, too. Actually, he was kind of a Raskolnikov from Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, fixated on the belief that he was superhuman, having a right to kill for some higher aims. In Devil the criminal didn’t get punished and the evil was his celebration of a devilish victory. In The Nonhuman the criminal is killed by an assassin’s bullet. Happy ending? Or evil just passing on its bloody baton?

Elena and a Russian Clyde

Russian Roulette, a film by V.Chikov, is made for spectators who love the American cinema of the ‘60s-‘70s. A couple of gangsters-outlaws rob racketeers, thieves and at last just suspicious-looking rich men until the dramatic ending. Chikov doesn’t conceal the origin of his movie in Arthur Penn’s 1967 Bonnie and Clyde. But his action takes place in Russia of the ‘90s, and instead of Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty there are Elena Yakovleva and Denis Karasev. They are not bad actors but they play in too “soviet” a way. The vivid music of A.Kozlov, with its rich saxophone tunes, from to time evokes a moody, stylish variation on the theme of gangsters’ Eros, grown dim in a romantic fog.

It would be ridiculous to demand that a common criminal movie rise to the level of Dostoevsky, so let’s enjoy at least Russian Roulette’s good music.

Abuse, Song, Fighting, Sex and Guns

It seems like only yesterday that Russian authorities didn’t want one of outstanding director K.Muratova’s films exhibited because its main female character uttered a couple of “bad language” words in one scene. In N.Dzhgurda’s film Superman Against His Will, or The Erotic Mutant the characters are swearing in nearly every scene, and it’s O.K. – the movie is circulating without restriction.

Were there indisputable artistic values in Dzhigurda’s auteur effort – he is the screenwriter, co-director (with S.Gaiduk), singer, poet and actor playing the role of an engineer-inventor in a constant fight with the Mafia – to be compared even a little with Muratova’s films, no one would be paying attention to its vocabulary. You can hear more of it in real life. Unfortunately, besides the trumped-up “bad language” Superman… can attract attention only through numerous soft-porn scenes wherein N.Dzhigurda apparently acted without a “body double”, while shyer A.Hmelnitska used the services of a young photomodel from Moscow men’s magazine Andrei. The film’s sexual-acrobatic episodes are, however, rather monotonous, and no more creative are its action scenes’ skirmishes.

Dzhgurda with his hoarse voice reminiscent of Vysotsky, flashes on Russian TV screen in assorted music videos, concerts and commercials. Superman…, obviously, was planned by him as a 1 1/2 –hour self-promotion, counting on million-ruble box-office profits. And here it is – an old, greasy, obscene story with an unbridled pop-music soundtrack.

Comedies `a la Russe

Identifying with Images

Until only recently it was hard to even imagine a comedy about the life and activities of Lenin appearing on Russian screens. His persona remained sacred through all the years of ‘20s –‘80s. But two talented directors - V.Studennikov & M.Grigiriev – have ventured to destroy a stereotype and defy the censors’ ban with A Comedy of Strict Regime. Those between age 50 and 100 certainly remember the unforgettable spring days of 1970, when the whole great country of Soviets prepared to celebrate the 100^th anniversary of this legendary workers’ leader. Press, TV and radio sent and endless stream of information blockbusters at the public. From Moscow to the very east a great wave of holiday celebration was rising.

The central characters of this movie swam in it, unfortunately for them. They, the officers of a rigidly organized prison colony, decide to surprise the authorities with an amateur-theater production, The Light of October, casting convicts in the roles of the first world state’s workers and peasants. In might seem that nothing could be stupider than this! But the more the ex-thieves and murderers identify themselves with their images, the clearer a resemblance becomes. Sitting in the theater, you understand that in spite of obvious differences (in education, for example) the actors and the prototypes are people with similar moral values. For them the life of an individual is worth nothing (“no man, no problem”), the aim justifies all means.

The seriousness of its material notwithstanding, the film is a real comedy, with excellent satirical skits on the colony’s life (a huge poster says, “Lenin is more alive than everybody living even now – V.I.Lenin”) and a perfect understanding of funny elements. It is not accidental that the role of this leader is given to the plainest, most insignificant convict, who day after day begins to identify with it, arming himself with quotations from the books and films of M.Romm – Lenin in October (1937) & Lenin in 1918 (1939) – and becoming himself a real leader, able to make the mob follow him wherever… even to escape from the colony, distracted by the celebration.

There is no Lenin-movie cliché that is not ironically remade in A Comedy of Strict Regime. In a fountain of quick-witted gags and dialogue the action develops dynamically; without extended or repeated tricks. This is humor behind which lies a bloody and terrible history of “dictatorship of the proletariat” and civil war, mass terror and violence. But there is a saying in the holy book of Marxism: “Mankind parts with the past laughing”.