Cinema for two. Travel from Moscow to Sochi by limousine with adventures on the way

Pyotr Todorovsky, no matter how trite the usual wording sounds, with his film “Love Story” made a significant contribution and filled the gap. His films, together with the films of his father and grandfather, made up an amazing mosaic of our history, the history of people in society, in the family, in everyday life.

The girl Masha lost her virginity at the age of twenty. It happened in the greenhouse of the Sochi sanatorium “Dream”. The young man Seva played the guitar well and liked the Sochi girls. But he went home to Moscow to study at the institute.

Ten years later, Masha decided to marry a wealthy businessman. She lives in Ostozhenka. Groom in Sochi. Masha has aerophobia. She doesn’t know anything special, she has one talent – to please men.

Masha hires a limousine as a taxi to Sochi. She is alone in a huge salon and smokes. Doesn’t want to talk. She doesn’t need people at all, especially a driver. The driver is Seva.

It is impossible to imagine how such a story will end. Its author, poet or director, a slave of feelings, a hostage of life experience, does not belong to himself. The characters tell their own stories about themselves. Their incompatible versions strive for a common goal. This is rare, but without it there is no personal story.

The journey from Moscow to Sochi is full of events of a teenage quest. Our heroes are not Romeo and Juliet, they are thirty, and you can hardly call them victims of conventions. It all ends with a sobering moment at the moment of a farewell kiss on the embankment under the surprised and unpleasant cry of the groom: “Masha ?!”

Yes, some kind of psycho has stuck – there will always be a woman in any situation. But it would seem that she was just ready to escape from fate with a dream of first love. Seva plays along with Masha, portraying a man stunned by life. All wives deceive their husbands, husbands lie to their wives – a passionate monologue attracts casual viewers, and Seva somehow absurdly justifies herself. How would he rehearse.

Two years later, Seva and Masha meet on Gogol Boulevard. She lives nearby, working as a secretary. She divorced her husband and quit smoking. He is acting in films. The dream came true. It would seem that he should be happy, but he began to smoke. And somehow nervous.

When the final credits rolled, at the behest of the director, the film continued to sleep. Seva meets Masha on the seashore. After the call “Kiss me!” Masha has a gun in her hands: you are a swindler and you will answer for it!

Shot. All. The screen turns off.

Such is the plot of the new film by Pyotr Todorovsky Jr. Love Story. His father Valery Todorovsky is known for the films “Love”, “Hipsters”, “Big”, “Odessa”. Grandfather Pyotr Todorovsky – “The Magician”, “City Romance”, “Beloved Woman of the Mechanic Gavrilov”, “Military Field Romance”, “On the Main Street with an Orchestra”, “Intergirl”, “Riorita”.

The picture begins with cleaning the salon in a limousine from the legacy of the previous someone else’s happiness in its collective expression. The bulk are naturally empty bottles. But comes across, for example, a stocking. Apparently the director this time decided not to excite the viewer unnecessarily. In “Dandies” featured a bra. And he could shoot at the screen with cowards. However, the meaning is the same, and condemning morality will fly from nowhere.

If the director has some personal problems and he uses the viewer, theoretically you should go to a psychologist. An hour and a half of screen time seems to stretch on forever. He says something. She, oddly enough, answers almost to the point. She is waiting for something. He hopes for something. And nothing happens.

From a lack of exciting events, she can throw a brick at him or burn her hand with a cigarette, after which the suitcases were packed on the road, and the wedding dress was removed from the birch.

What is first love? It’s a drug for him, because first love doesn’t rust. For her – thumped, fucked, thumped again and fucked, then fled. It seems to her that he would have called to Moscow, she would have gone. But he did not say the main words. She beckoned him with her finger. So the dog is given the command “Come to me!”. Where did the quivering girl go, who was learning a piece for the piano and did not know a rude word?

If the artist must be hungry, then the actor must be unhappy. After an overly “successful” meeting with her first love, Seva’s fate moved upwards towards fame.

All such different films of the three Todorovskys are somewhat similar. They are very personal, lived by the director in life and fantasies around reality. In general, this is true realism. Life is just like that. There are always many promises and hopes, misunderstandings and disappointments, cruel sobering and hopeless understatement in it.

Almost the entire film has only two characters in the frame – Alexander Petrov as Seva Gorelov and Vilma Kutavichute as Masha Sokolova. Petrov played many different roles, sometimes very unpleasant, and remained almost the same. You can’t call him handsome, but for Masha he remains so.

Vilma Kutavichyute is a very characteristic actress. It seems that she looks like Renata Litvinova, but she is really so attractive in her unusualness. What she will do in the next moment, you will not guess. Yeah, she doesn’t even know. This is her natural form.

Only two actors in the frame for almost the entire film, this can be afforded by the director either of great talent and rich life experience, or from an excess of opportunities with a lack of imagination. In the film “Love Story” the first option is obvious.

There are films that look like a mirror of their own soul on the screen. To such a state at a sufficient level of perception. A strong feature for the classification of genres is modern Hollywood or in the traditions of Russian cinema. In one version, the director descends to the level of the viewer, as investors and producers understand him. This is not even a genre, but an art direction aimed at reconstructing the future for humanity. Pre-movie previews are shown and, in general, this is enough to get an idea. In our specific perception, we get something like the images on the shields of Dzhyan ben Dzhyan by the Strugatskys to protect against the dragon with images of all the battles of the future and all the battles of the past on different sides.

Another variant makes it possible to reflect without embellishment the achieved state of people with a dangerous discrepancy between sexual and social maturity. There is no need to repeat, we have written a lot about the unique role of Russian classical literature in penetrating the mysteries of the human phenomenon. Russian cinema has picked up the tradition and continues to develop in the same direction.

As they say, we live a long time. And we know the only recipe for how to balance life in the family. It’s difficult, but possible. This is a common cause, common interests and a natural desire to present their version. This is exactly what happened in the family contract of directors Todorovsky.

But we are not going to give up our own youth with its ridiculous prominences of passions. We walked towards each other for a long time through random chiasms of fate. And even now, not everything is clear.

For us, the random interweaving of destinies of the characters on the screen does not look exotic. In life, it happens more abruptly. Incredible events have taken the fashion of repeating themselves. Such is our life. We are not allowed to escape from it either to the front or abroad.

Pyotr Todorovsky, no matter how trite the usual wording sounds, with his film “Love Story” made a significant contribution and filled the gap. His films, together with the films of his father, grandfather and grandfather’s wife Mira, made up an amazing mosaic of our history, the history of people in society, in the family, and everyday life.

Surprisingly, in the cinema we were just the same as the characters on the screen. Again we got a movie for two. Very trusting and pleasant.

In themselves, things are neither good nor bad, but only in our estimation.

Natalia Vakurova, Lev MOSKOVKIN.