Playfulness is not worth the candle – Newspaper Kommersant No. 21 (7466) of 02/04/2023

The directorial debut of media manager Alexander Krestnikov “Easy Acquaintance” was released. Mikhail Trofimenkov I have not seen anything like it since the perestroika times of the “cooperative”, “erotic” cinema of the unforgettable Anatoly Eyramdzhan.

There is an anecdote about a grandmother who was caught by her shocked grandchildren watching porn about a plumber and a housewife. At all attempts to distract her from the spectacle, the old woman only brushed aside: “Don’t interfere, you really want to know if they will get married in the end or not.” When you watch Easy Acquaintance, you feel like such a grandmother. I so want to know whether the Stranger (Liza Klimova) will “give” a stoiros-looking biopsychologist – whatever that means – Odintsov (Dmitry Orlov), whom she caught in the resort region, or “won’t give it”.

The stranger is either a professional on vacation, who got it into her head to drive the exemplary intellectual, as the authors of the film imagine him, crazy. Either a simultaneous interpreter, fluent in languages. Whether the nymphomaniac inside out. Is that, as she assures, Donna Juana is the female reincarnation of Casanova, taking revenge on the peasants for millennia of gender lawlessness.

By the way, the authors did not stint on the episode with Casanova. It seems to be a touching reference to the domestic “soft porn” of the early 1990s, coyly inventing for itself some kind of pseudo-historical alibi. The same references to the kitsch of the past: Sochi, filmed in the style of a commercial, and – what could be more romantic – a night swim in a stormy sea, and a serving table with champagne, ordered to the room, as a sign of exquisite hotel luxury. And a delightful mixture of sexism and feminism, again, as their authors understand.

Well, of course, the Stranger “will not give.” And this is not a spoiler, but another genre feature of the domestic “software”, which, it would seem, has sunk into oblivion along with the perestroika video salons equipped in the former station toilets. It only teases, showing either a thigh, or a shoulder, or even all of oneself a la naturel, but only through the misted plexiglass of a hotel shower. Well, yes, well, yes, even Joseph Brodsky noted: “The virgin amuses to a certain limit – // You can’t go further than the elbow or the knee.”

Yes, even the Stranger will not name his name. Then he will offer to call himself a choice of Faith, Hope or Love – it’s good that it’s not their mother Sophia. She introduces herself as Henrietta. According to the script, she is a very well-read girl, she freely quotes Horace, Victor Hugo and a political economy textbook. But the name Henrietta evokes only an association, hardly programmed by Alexander Krestnikov and co-author of the script Valentin Krasnogorov: parody verses by Nikolai Oleinikov dedicated to a financially responsible employee of the Leningrad Detgiz. “I’m in love with Henrietta Davydovna, // But she doesn’t seem to be in me – // She gave Schwartz a receipt, // I don’t think there is a receipt.”

“Easy Acquaintance” is better to listen to than to watch. This is the only way to fully appreciate the art of dialogues worthy of Eyramjan’s films “Womanizer” and “Impotent”.

“Mystery makes a woman attractive, otherwise she is uninteresting, like a crossword puzzle solved.”

“I’m hooking on you because I want to pick you up.”

“You are afraid of me?” “No, myself.”

“That man is bad who, inviting a woman to dinner, does not hope to have breakfast with her.”

“High words usually cover up disgusting deeds. Men say that your eyes are like stars, but they themselves crawl under their skirts.

Is it really possible to write dialogues in 2022 A.D. like this? e.? Well, since they write, then it is possible. In the screen land of magnolias, where the Black Sea splashes, nothing has changed in more than thirty years, and everything is possible.