Clinic, mother and two children – Weekend – Kommersant
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Igor Voloshin’s Medea, written by Vasily Sigarev, is being released, a horror about how a mother, gradually losing her mind, tries to save her sons from a babayka. The myth of Medea is becoming one of the most relevant plots of Russian cinema of the 20s – the previous Medea, by Alexander Zeldovich, was released in 2021.
Ziggurats of new buildings prop up the sky. A girl runs past the monotonous entrances, suddenly something falls from above right next to her. Kitty. To death. Lisa comes for the cat from the 21st floor – a stern blonde in a black hoodie. The first thing the ex-husband will ask Lisa when he finds out about the death of the cat: “Did you dump him?”
Liza is angry, has seen a lot in her life – she works as a hairdresser at home. And she also brings up two twins, either bringing them to tears, or throwing herself at them with hugs. He drinks a little. Constantly. The ex-husband and his new passion can not stand. And he can’t stand it at all, he doesn’t leave, he can’t cope. Around her, something begins to twist, shrink: some kind of “aunt” appears, although Liza is from the orphanage, and says that a curse has been placed on their family – the children will die if their mother does not refuse them. “Entities” will come for the children – and that’s it, hello. Lisa is not ready to give up her sons, she takes the twins and runs – into the wilderness, where her eyes look, into the darkness. He quarrels with everyone he meets. The entities, of course, immediately appear, hissing and growling into the phone, letting in fog, ringing bells, luring somewhere, reminding you that you don’t want to remember (“Who did you want to knock out the teeth so as not to gnaw? Now have you learned? And ? A?”). And most importantly, they shine with bald heads – it seems like such a strange humor, for a hairdresser bald – undead.
Liza doesn’t care who she saves her sons from: from bald women, from the “aunt”, from her husband or from the police. Children keep her in this world, they will not be – and nothing will remain of her. The allusions are understandable: not only the myth of Medea, who killed her own children, but also the directly quoted fairy tale by Yevgeny Schwartz “Two Maples”, where the mother must please Baba Yaga, only then she will return her sons, “Others” of Amenabara, where the mother, as she can , takes care of his children, although neither these children nor their mother have been in the world for a long time, The Shining with cute twins, and indeed the whole Stephen King with his ability to turn any parallel reality into hell, especially the one in which everyone wants how best. But in Medea, all this does not really stick together: the tale of a mother who has gone mad quickly tires, the tale of a mother protecting her sons immediately becomes unconvincing, and a hallucinogenic trip through Russian folk rhymes, gray wolves and black funnels is needed only for In order for the heroine to have something to do – without evil spirits, she either yells at the children “brush your teeth and sleep!”, Or jumps into the car, or jumps out of the car.
Obvious subplots – Orthodoxy in the fight against evil spirits, a former orphanage girl who seized power over her own children, fear of illness, fear of being a “bad mother”, finally, the desire to rewrite or at least forget the past – do not work, they hang in the painted air of the film because actress Olga Simonova has only one task: to play a crazy mother. She smiles too hastily at the sight of the children, too cheerfully goes astray at any opportunity, drags the boys to where she stinks of the infernal: into the deep forest, or to a detached cottage in a hotel, or even better – to a rented apartment from ” old fund. Liza, urging her sons on, passes at night through a yellow-swampy yard, where the concrete walls are densely covered with either graffiti or cinders, and opens the entrance door, which would look wonderful in some shooter like Atomic Heart – and the situation is completely she doesn’t seem a little, how shall I say, unsettling.
In one interview, Igor Voloshin called his series “Kosa” (2021) “a necro-renaissance” – “a story with carrion, but with terrible beauty.” There is enough carrion in Medea, Voloshin’s signature play with color is responsible for beauty – everything on the screen is brown, gray, blue; red, too, of course, it happens, not without it. Mirrors, reflections, deep water, a frame cleaned to perfection, cold interiors, impeccable – although there are two children of kindergarten age in the house. Garbage neatly laid out – although in the house, in addition to two children, there is also a mother, sliding into madness.
In general, all this is not very convincing and not scary at all. But, of course, horror – especially Russian horror – does not make sense to make claims in the illogicality of actions, in the under-manifestation of philosophical overtones, or in the excessive beauty of locations. “Medea” balances on the verge of the imaginary, the real and the incurable.
Claims to the films of Igor Voloshin are also stupid to present. He considers himself a “crack” of commercial cinema, a bearer of “100% art” serving commercial purposes. His most successful series – Olga (2016), Kosa – and the most sassy films – Nirvana (2008), I (2009) – are based on drive and calculation, on arrogance and music, on greyhound visionary and glamorization of everything that comes into view. “Medea” compared to “I” or even “Bedouin” (2011), where the same Olga Simonova wins back similar female fears, is like the twenties compared to the nineties, zero or tenths. False, gloomy, unconvincingly hysterical, I would like to go back to the beginning and replay.
And there are no complaints about screenwriter Vasily Sigarev at all. He has always explored the enchanted Russian spaces – and the fairytale forest from his Spinning Top (2009) is reflected in the new buildings of Medea. He was going to stage Medea himself, Yana Troyanova was supposed to play the main role, then he changed his mind – he realized that he himself would not pull the picture. Perhaps he would have made an anti-Volchok, perhaps a scarier horror than To Live (2011), perhaps a funny story about how a mother of two children runs and swears with those whom she considers servants.
Voloshin’s “Medea” explores not mythological, but rather commercial spaces. Is it possible to save the cinema from the babaika? And if you lock yourself in a closet and pretend that no one is in the house?
Killing cannot be saved. Let the comma appear somewhere.
At the box office from March 16
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