I love how it leads in into his change into a woman (or rather cross dresser) following the folk tale of cheating death by becoming somebody else. Fantastic.
And then it all goes to total abyss of failure. The movie spins into a mute hate filled display of how the local people (including his family) are all hating on him for doing this, and there is 0 communication from anyone as to reasons, or in fact, no talk at all. Just him... going about and getting mistreated by everybody. It becomes a different movie and throws everything away that has been previously set. It could have been done so much better and still portray that anti gay russian sentiment (which is what this movie was actually about), but they opted for a hurried up shock value approach. Speaking of shock value, it has none because everything is predictable, cliched, lacking emotion.. you just DONT CARE. They destroyed his character to the point you just don't care.
The ending is ambiguous at best. It suggest his trick worked, or rather, that he was misdiagnosed; we will never know. And then if that is so, it infers he likes what he was doing and came out, or became a drag queen from now on. Russian cinema is still suffering from its inability of using dialogue to convey a story. This has been true since the 70s when that silent expose movement took over there and they still cannot get rid of it.
This gets a 5 because the start is great and it just turns into garbage.
I had high hopes for this. But alas, hopes were dashed.
And then it all goes to total abyss of failure. The movie spins into a mute hate filled display of how the local people (including his family) are all hating on him for doing this, and there is 0 communication from anyone as to reasons, or in fact, no talk at all. Just him... going about and getting mistreated by everybody. It becomes a different movie and throws everything away that has been previously set. It could have been done so much better and still portray that anti gay russian sentiment (which is what this movie was actually about), but they opted for a hurried up shock value approach. Speaking of shock value, it has none because everything is predictable, cliched, lacking emotion.. you just DONT CARE. They destroyed his character to the point you just don't care.
The ending is ambiguous at best. It suggest his trick worked, or rather, that he was misdiagnosed; we will never know. And then if that is so, it infers he likes what he was doing and came out, or became a drag queen from now on. Russian cinema is still suffering from its inability of using dialogue to convey a story. This has been true since the 70s when that silent expose movement took over there and they still cannot get rid of it.
This gets a 5 because the start is great and it just turns into garbage.
I had high hopes for this. But alas, hopes were dashed.