Betting on laughter

Ruslan Bratov’s film “Express” is released, which received the main prize and two more awards at the Window to Europe festival in Vyborg. The “boy” story about sports betting literally hits the screen with genuine internal energy that invigorated Julia Shagelman.

Ruslan Bratov drew attention to himself in 2017, when his film Lalai-Balalai, a black comedy about four drunken men stuck on a carousel that you can’t get off and that you can’t stop, won in the Kinotavr short competition. This carousel, of course, was not just an attraction in a night park, but a metaphor for post-Soviet Russian reality, or, perhaps, life in general, which, whatever one may say, ends in death anyway. Since then, Bratov has been working on his first full-length picture, and the hopes placed on it have been justified: in the Vyborg competition, which consisted of three-quarters of debuts, Express stood out with a professional acumen, rarely characteristic of beginners.

The action of the film takes place in the Caucasus, in the director’s native Cherkessk (although Karachaevsk plays his “role” on the screen: mountains were needed in the frame). This, of course, immediately arouses the temptation to put it on a par with the paintings of graduates of the Kabardino-Balkarian workshop of Alexander Sokurov: Kantemir Balagov, Kira Kovalenko, Vladimir Bitokov. But unlike them, Express is a genre movie, not a drama about the unbearable narrowness of life, but an adventurous comedy that, despite the fact that it doesn’t embellish the reality given to the characters in the senses, manages to be both light, and funny, and even almost optimistic. Those same mountains, of course, limit space, but at the same time they protect. Perhaps that is why the main character, the resilient loser Sasha Soslanov, nicknamed Sos (Lev Zulkarnaev), does not lose his good mood under any circumstances, even in prison, even at a commemoration.

It is the radiant and idiotic belief that everything will definitely be fine and fate will certainly give him a gift that makes Sosa return to the smoky bookmaker again and again, although he has never won anything, he has the last thousand left, and bets from him are there no longer accepted. Then Sos turns a small scam: he persuades the first simpleton he met on the street (Pavel Vorozhtsov), with whom they together rescued a hedgehog that fell into an open sewer manhole, to issue a “bookmaker” card for three hundred rubles on his passport data. He agrees with surprising ease, and Sasha decides on a daring express bet: in it you have to guess the results of eight sporting events, and if they all converge, the winnings will be as much as a million. It’s not that he has plans on what to spend this million on: the victory itself here seems to be more important than the amount.

Contrary to all common sense, Sosa’s predictions are beginning to come true, which means there is reason to celebrate. But while drinking with Gray (Sergey Gaiterov), a soulmate and roommate, the cherished card is lost and thus turns into a MacGuffin, a magical golden ticket, the search for which will be tied to all further adventures of Sos. At the same time, he will also have to try to avoid expulsion from the technical school (and eviction from the hostel), as well as say goodbye to Nina (Olga Smirnova), who is going to leave for Moscow as a teacher, with whom the hero turns an optional, like everything else in his life, romance .

Bratov’s film is both a physiological essay and a picaresque novel, a collection of anecdotes from North Caucasian life and an absurdist fable about expecting a miracle, devoid, however, of any specific morality. The situations in which Sos finds himself seem to be the most banal (here, for example, there is a sketch about raising a refrigerator to the eighth floor without an elevator), but they turn into almost fabulous trials that fall out to Ivan the Fool on his way to the reserved treasure. Also at once universal and specific are the characters he meets along the way, from the taxi driver-philosopher Viktor (Arthur Khatagov) to the patient dean (Khalil Musaev) and local gangsters who decided to put their paw on the winning card. An ensemble of non-professional actors selected with sniper accuracy, natural and at the same time aphoristic dialogues, organic humor and a strong plot outline – it is not known whether the Express will hit the jackpot of audience love, but the authors made a promising bet on it.