Review of the film by Andrei Smirnov “For us with you”

Andrey Smirnov’s film For Us and You, released on Internet platforms, aroused keen interest and a flurry of polar reactions. I got acquainted with the new work of the veteran director Andrey Plakhov.

Most of the action takes place in a communal apartment. This Soviet microcosm is sung and cursed by Ilya Kabakov, who has recently passed away, but also by many brilliant filmmakers. The Soviet communal apartment is both the good-natured nostalgic little world of Mikhail Kozakov’s “Pokrovsky Gates” and the chimerical waking nightmare of Alexei German in the film “Khrustalev, car.” Andrey Smirnov presents the quintessence of the communal theme in its everyday, but extremely toxic version. After all, this is taking place at the height of the anti-Semitic campaign and the “fight against the cosmopolitans,” the bravura code of senile Stalinism on the eve of the death of the leader.

End of 1952 – March 1953. In a communal apartment on Bolshaya Pirogovka live a Jewish doctor (Leonid Yarmolnik), the family of a professor of philosophy with Polish-Russian noble roots, the people around them. The confrontation between the “former” and “current” continues within the Petkevich family: the philosopher Pyotr Kazimirovich (Andrey Smolyakov) and his wife Angelina Fedorovna, who studied at Smolny (Irina Rozanova), are forced to put up with the choice of their daughter, the beautiful and clever Dina (Yulia Snigir). And she chose a simple guy (played by Alexander Ustyugov) and – unlike Veronica from The Cranes Are Flying – she waited for her Boris from the front. Thus, a communist metro builder appeared in a family of intellectuals and in the spirit of anti-Soviet, and this is already fraught with almost a civil war. Actually, the war raging in every “cell of society” and in the souls of people is the theme of Smirnov’s film, even the title of which, taken from a popular toast, claims that there are “they” and there are “we and you”, nothing in common.

It is clear what the very appeal to the dark era looks like with its attendant allusions. But even among the “liberals” there are enough of those who did not accept the film, considering it not artistic enough and complaining that the characters, even at the festive table, express themselves in texts, as if written for agitprop brochures.

But the reason is definitely not in the errors of artistic hearing, Andrei Smirnov does not suffer from this in any way. According to the director, the filming took place from February 8 to April 30, 2022, and this explains a lot. What looks like straightforwardness is most likely a conscious step towards journalism.

But with a clear bias towards journalism, Smirnov is not the person who would give up artistic ambitions for her sake and put everything on ideological shelves. It is possible to interpret the behavior of Boris in different ways, who during the arrest of his father-in-law was called a “snitch” and soon left the family, either not having survived the insult, or hastening to distance himself from the relatives of the “enemy of the people”. And before that, the same Boris hired a former prisoner of war with a wolf ticket to work in Metrostroy. Is he a good person or a bad person? The answer is left to the viewer.

The film also contains a highly emotional scene of a drunken dance in a hut under Minskaya Street (Road to Berlin) by Mark Fradkin and Yevgeny Dolmatovsky: Smirnov’s homage to himself, the author of Belorussky Station. In general, the line of the “people” is just ambiguous; even the hysteria of those mourning Stalin’s death turns into its opposite. A hint that the evil spells are subsiding and the country, along with its population, is awakening to a new life.

The most difficult acting tasks were assigned to Andrei Smolyakov and Irina Rozanova. The first was to play a student of Husserl, a great philosopher (like Gustav Shpet), who almost did not hide his contempt for Marxism and Soviet power. The type of actor resisted this task in many ways, but he nevertheless solved it in his own way. But the real queen of this “aristocratic ball” was Rozanova, who, unlike other characters, got very few lines. She leads her part without further ado, revealing the character of the heroine with one movement of her eyebrows or a contemptuous half-smile. She, again at the table, formulates a metaphor for the social confrontation that, even decades after the revolution, is tearing Russia apart from the inside. Olivier salad becomes such a metaphor, the “genuine” formula of which no one knows for sure. When asked if she puts potatoes in this dish, Angelina Fedorovna replies: “No way. Potato is not Olivier, it is public catering.”

In addition to social and political themes, Smirnov’s films usually include an element that can be described as romantic. And erotic too. “For You and Us” is no exception. The impetus for the appearance of this picture was the beauty of the actress Yulia Snigir – why not? Her heroine shines and glows like a real star. And it reflects the light of other acting luminaries gathered in this ensemble: here, in addition to those named, are Ksenia Rappoport, and Ivan Dobronravov, and Dmitry Kulichkov, and Galina Tyunina, and Marina Kleshcheva.

But above all, the blue-eyed charismatic Alexander Kuznetsov is involved in the romantic plot. Although his Ivan is an EMGB officer, he comes from a dispossessed family and generally looks like a decent person. The meeting of the main character with him and their sudden love scene could look like a fabulous “Hollywood” happy ending, but they are still read as a signal of hope that Russian colds will never last forever.