Cosmic couplets

Klim Shipenko’s space drama “The Challenge” is being released, for the filming of which the lead actress Yulia Peresild and the director himself really flew into space to the real ISS. Julia Shagelman I’m not sure that the result was worth the spent budget and heroic efforts.

“Challenge” is a paradoxical case when an active promotional campaign that started in a completely different life, two and a half years before the release of the film, instead of warming up interest in the film, rather acts the other way around. After all, all the most interesting things have already happened, and the audience was privy to all the details of the filming process. First, the then head of Roskosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, and the general director of Channel One, Konstantin Ernst, came up with the idea that it was necessary to make a movie in space, then they began to look for performers and write a script for it. It would probably be more logical to first come up with a film and, realizing that there is no other way to bring it to life, go to surf the expanses of space, but what is there, this is not the first situation when logic recedes before the super task.

Then Channel One held a competition among hardy actresses, the winner of which was Yulia Peresild, then she, together with the director, prepared for the flight, then the flight took place, and its course was covered in all the news. All in order to, according to Mr. Ernst, to show the real space, which “the audience has not yet seen in the cinema.” The fact that this real space, without knowing the background, cannot be distinguished from the space reproduced with the help of scenery and visual effects from numerous Hollywood films (which, without saying it out loud, the authors are guided by), apparently remains a problem for the viewer.

It all starts with a scene quite frankly borrowed from Gravity by Alfonso Cuarón (2013) — when viewed, it is remembered almost as often as the serial production of the same Channel One. During a standard working mission in open space, two cosmonauts (they are played by real cosmonauts Oleg Novitsky and Pyotr Dubrov) start to fall on some kind of interstellar debris, and one of them … no, does not fly away into a vacuum where no one can hear your scream, like George Clooney in Cuarón, but gets a chest injury. After consulting with the luminary of surgery (Andrey Shchepochkin), the MCC decides not to return the victim to Earth (he may not survive the flight), but to operate on him directly on board the ISS. But not before flight director Volin, with a wise fatherly squint (Vladimir Mashkov), encourages Peter, who is doing a tracheotomy to the injured Oleg, that “a well-connected girl does not need caresses” – thus setting the tone of humor in the film.

At this time, Zhenya Borisova (Peresild), a student of the luminary and a talented surgeon herself, leads an ordinary life on Earth as a wounded single mother, torn between work and the upbringing of her teenage daughter (Varvara Volodina). Since in a film as ideological as Defiance the heroine cannot be divorced or never married at all, she is a widow. A black-and-white flashback with her husband (Mikhail Troinik) who died in an accident will return many times, each time reminding her that she blames herself for his death. A routine with mental anguish, three surgeries a day, a relationship with an attractive colleague Vladislav (Milos Bikovich) frozen at some ambiguous point, and calls to school for her daughter who had a fight with a classmate, is interrupted by a much more important call – to the MCC, where Zhenya must develop a detailed plan of action. At the same time, no one is going to send her into space for the simple reason that she is a woman.

But thanks to the same promotional campaign, of course, we know in advance that it is Zhenya who will fly to the ISS, whom Volin will prefer to all other candidates at the last moment. From that moment on, the film turns from a melodrama into a sci-fi about the structure of the ISS: it is arranged closely and uncomfortable, and the actress’s beautifully flowing hair in weightlessness seems to be such a blatant violation of safety regulations that it completely distracts from what is happening – however, it was here that the authors decided to sacrifice realism for the sake of spectacular shots. The cosmonauts pronounce their lines with the desperate awkwardness of people who for some reason have been distracted from serious work, Yulia Peresild demonstrates an enviable physical shape, the mother of the heroine (Elena Valyushkina) is responsible for comic interruptions. Crowning everything successfully – and this is also not a spoiler – the operation, after which Zhenya returns home, having received a kiss of hands from the leadership of the MCC and a declaration of love from Vladislav as a reward. If directors fly into space, then someone needs it, but the answers to whom and for what are definitely not in this film.