Review of the film “Frau” by Lyubov Mulmenko

The film “Frau” is the second directorial work of Lyubov Mulmenko, which premiered in 2023 at the Mayak film festival, where the film received the prize for best screenplay. The director uses the time-tested formula of a romantic comedy about the (non)attraction of opposites to prove the benefits of consciously chosen solitude, and does it so witty and graceful that it is difficult to disagree with it, says Julia Shagelman.

For those interested in Russian auteur cinema, Lyubov Mulmenko is known primarily as a screenwriter. She wrote scripts for films and TV series by Natalia Meshchaninova (“Nadezhda Plant”, “Red Bracelets”), Nigina Sayfullaeva (“What’s My Name”, “Kids”, “Loyalty”), and had a hand in the films “Unclenching Fists” by Kira Kovaleva and “Coupe number 6” by Juho Kuosmanen, for which she composed Russian dialogues. Her directorial debut “Danube” – naturally, filmed from her own script – was released in 2021 and was about a Muscovite who went on vacation to Belgrade and unexpectedly chose as an object of romantic feelings a local resident who attracted her… however, what exactly was he attracted her, and remained a mystery throughout the film. Of course, this was not so much a story of love as of acute loneliness, desperately looking for a way out: somewhere, at least with someone.

Frau is essentially based on the same idea. However, the style and intonation here are completely different, far from the strict realism of “Danube” and the disappointment (of the characters, if not the authors) in life and love that permeates it. Although this picture does not sparkle with any particular optimism – despite the fact that its main character, Vanya (Vadik Korolev), a salesman from the “Hunter and Fisherman” store, begins every day with cheerful songs of the Soviet pioneers. The film takes place in the real, recognizable Perm, native to Mulmenko, but Vanya, like other characters, lives in his own, somewhat conventional world. However, in his case, the discrepancy between this world and the real one is especially noticeable: he lives in his grandmother’s apartment with old furniture, wallpaper and a stuffed owl, without feeling any desire to change his surroundings, brushes his teeth with powder, has breakfast with boiled eggs and peas, drinks tea from a glass with a glass holder , and communicates with others like a person who woke up after forty years spent in a cryochamber.

The only thing that doesn’t suit Vanya in his cozy retro life is loneliness, which he seriously considers a mortal sin. He wants a family and children, but his ideas about women are the same, not even old-fashioned, but gleaned from translated literature and Soviet films about past eras (Vanya really loves “The Legend of Ulenspiegel”: the book and film adaptation by Alov and Naumov). He divides all representatives of the opposite sex into “Frau,” that is, those with whom you can fall in love and chivalrously court them, and “his guys,” like a colleague from the store nicknamed Kolyan (Daria Konyzheva), with whom he can go fishing and share other men’s activities.

Vanya even composes a fairy tale about one “Frau” who rejected his love during his student years, which he hides in a freezer as cold as the icy heart of a beautiful lady. The second, even more beautiful, unexpectedly appears on the stage of the Perm Opera and Ballet Theater – this is Christina (Liza Yankovskaya), dancing the part of Giselle.

Her life, with an overprotective mother (Inga Oboldina) and grandmother (Lyudmila Chirkova), a dead-end romance with a married surgeon (Aleksey Rozin), an injured knee and a lack of professional prospects, does not seem to be conducive to romantic dreams. But Christina, of course, has them, although they take the form of a practical compromise: if you don’t see a knight in shining armor on the horizon, why not fashion him yourself, at least from this strange Vanya, who is at least not married and seems quite compliant.

So one world begins to invade another, and literally too: having moved in with Vanya, Christina decisively gets rid of her grandmother’s curtains and repaints the walls white. But changing a person turns out to be much more difficult than changing furniture (the same applies to Vanya’s attempts to replace the real Christina with a dreamed-up “Frau” not only in his head, but in reality). The melody that accompanies the comically awkward dance of two completely inappropriate people in the spirit of “one step forward and two steps back” becomes quite sad at some point.

However, Lyubov Mulmenko does not present this discrepancy as a tragedy or at least a drama. The film is characterized by lightness, which Christina so lacks on stage: it is felt in the dialogues, written accurately and truly funny, in the staging of even the saddest mise-en-scenes, in the natural performance of the actors, in the reckless violation of the laws of the romantic genre. No, Vanya will not see in the finale, as is expected in rom-coms, that true love was nearby all this time, in the person of Kolyan. But he, and his fighting friend, and the failed “Frau” will be able to find those with whom it is so good to be alone, without the need to endure, adjust and adjust – themselves.