Svetlana Proskurina was surprised by the invitation to the film “First Love” by Igor Vernik

Svetlana Proskurina started at Lenfilm. Her feature debut “Playground” took place in 1987, and two years later she received the “Golden Leopard” for “Random Waltz” at the International Film Festival in Locarno. “Reflection in the Mirror” was shown in the “Directors’ Fortnight” of the Cannes Film Festival, “Remote Access” – in the competition of the Venice Film Festival. “Truce” was awarded the main award of “Kinotavr” in 2010. Svetlana Nikolaevna became a co-author of the script “Russian Ark” by Alexander Sokurov, made documentaries about Ernst Neizvestny, Mikhail Shemyakin, Mikhail Pugovkin, Alexander Sokurov, Viktor Proskurin.

In “First Love”, colleagues Anna Sergeevna and Lena arrive at a suburban sanatorium, where they witness a crime. At first, they pretend that nothing has happened, and when they realize that a threat looms over them, they cannot leave. Something attracts them in a person who carries a threat. The dangerous hero was played by Igor Vernik, for whom this picture was a turning point, and he regards the meeting with Svetlana Proskurina as a miracle. “It was as if I met with the director, with whom I had to meet in order to realize not only professional, but also human things,” the actor admitted. At some point, he panicked at the animal level, as he himself said, he felt that Proskurin would not shoot him. Intuition did not deceive – they approved another actor. But Vernik convinced Svetlana Proskurina with his thirst to overcome.

– The choice of actors in “First Love” is not at all obvious. Igor Vernik and you are like different poles.

“Three years ago, I could not imagine that we would work together. It was a risk. Igor put seven months of uninterrupted and practically free work on the role. This is a kind of professional feat, absolute immersion, eternal doubt about whether he can do it. I immediately told him about the background that I don’t like what he plays, except for the play “Running”. Then there was no “Optimistic” in the Moscow Art Theater. I offered him something impossible for the two of us, and Igor did an outstanding role. For him, this is a human victory over himself. He was ready to clean himself, turn inside out and sew up with harsh threads. Few people are capable of this. He had no other motivation than the desire to move somewhere, and this is amazing. No rider, as is the case with famous actors. We dined together. I never eat separately from the group. Everything is clean, sparingly, brotherly. If someone asked me what prize to give to your painting, I would answer: “Give the award to Wernick, because he accomplished a professional feat.”

– The role of the young heroine was played by a completely unknown actress Lisa Kugai. Has an amazing story happened to her too?

– Crowds of girls came to me with the same expression on their faces. One of them told about Lisa, who studies at Tabakov’s school. Due to her Asian appearance, she was advised not to pursue the acting profession because there would be no work anyway. When Lisa came to us, it became clear that this was an absolute hit.

Marina Brusnikina played her older colleague. Is there something from you in this heroine?

– Not a drop. I am totally different. Only a close circle really knows me. The trouble is when we do something autobiographical. If you have one meaning – yourself, then this immediately reduces the degree of what is offered. The world is so complex, and just talking about your life, your successful or failed love is just as ridiculous as the fact that we live poorly, that they used to bake good bread, but now they don’t. We live in some kind of world, one way or another we manifest ourselves in it. We won’t have anything else. I’m more concerned about how a blond Nesterov youth with blue eyes is able to hit someone on the head. How did we get on this path? Think of Fellini’s La Dolce Vita. Why does a person kill children, his wife, himself in a cozy little doll’s apartment, where nothing portends trouble, but there is fear on the periphery of consciousness? A little time passed, and we all found ourselves inside this fear. Such clarity of the end when everything is allowed. And nothing can chill us, as my grandmother used to say. We eat each other like that, even dreaming about love. This is what happens in First Love. Wernick’s hero needs her as a person who has lost integrity. How to turn this feeling into harmony? Only devoured, devoured. Then peace will come, confidence will come that no one will betray. We love and torment, and when we don’t love, we torment. As her beloved Sofya Andreevna Tolstaya writes in her diaries (for three years this has been my desk book): why such humiliation and such happiness from him, it would be better if he did not exist, would kill him. I would kill, and then create again, but exactly like that. We are moving with leaps and bounds into a space where there is nothing to breathe, where nobody needs anyone. That’s what the conversation is about. And not about how Masha fell in love with Petya.

– How did Marina Brusnikina take your offer?

– She miraculously manifested itself on our film “Sunday”. I knew that she was a great actress, although in reality she was a professor and theater director. We shoot fast. Marina accurately chose the intonation, the drawing of the role, and I was so impressed. When screenwriter Katya Tirdatova and I were stretching the material, I clearly understood that the role should be written for Marina Brusnikina. Everyone wants love, regardless of the number of years, health, mistakes made. We are waiting for sweets, a wonderful man behind whom is like behind a stone wall. And love is always conflict, tragedy, despair. I thought that Marina had a good female age. Her heroine hopes and waits.

– You have a great command of the word. Why are you a screenwriter?

— The powerful energies of people whom I respect for their talent, desperation, meekness are important to me. I need dialogue. I once wrote “Remote Access” and vowed to talk to myself throughout the whole picture. My teacher Ilya Averbakh said: “Don’t be afraid if in the middle of the film you realize that you will never finish it, that you have filmed monstrous rubbish. Don’t panic, just move on step by step and you will see that you have come out of this state and complete the picture. The director cannot live without dialogue. It is better with an equal when the person is yours and you feel him. I tell everyone: do not write for yourself, even if you know how, you will stop hearing the energy of the word. Do you know what it means to “see” a picture? This happens when you sit for seven months on the editing. I would probably give a kidney to see everything with different eyes, not like the first time. I love short pictures, I don’t allow myself to gobble up more than an hour and a half of someone else’s time. Thirty hour is a good space for a movie. Therefore, I need a screenwriter, cameraman, actors, although I, in essence, do not allow them anything. It seems to them that the space is free. I spend a lot of time making them feel like they are swimming on their own. And they suddenly become so frank that personal anxieties are already more powerful than the proposed circumstances. All this creates polyphony and unsteadiness, and we find our own voice and style. I love what Robert Bresson said about not having a director be the best director possible. You don’t need a profession. You need authorship, the ability to say what is important to you. Then it will be important to someone else. You may not like it, but you will not forget it.

– You said that Oleg Lukichev is your eyes. Is it important for the operator to be intelligent?

– Once Alexander Sokurov said that I found my eyes in Oleg Lukichev. I don’t know if it’s important or not for the operator to be intelligent, it’s just there. Lukichev has one of the best libraries in Moscow. He writes himself. We spend a lot of time together with him. The fact that he is an operator is important only when we are working. Our relationship is beautiful beyond the picture. Oleg is an absolute intellectual. What a Bach collection he has! We leaf through art albums with him, go to exhibitions. Our air cushion is Bacon, Velasquez, Leo Tolstoy, Sofya Andreevna’s letters… They are always at hand – a replica, a line, absurdity. Working with Oleg is a pleasure. This is a refined, amazingly educated person. The operator is still a technical profession, but he has his own world. It’s such a stroke of luck that we once met and had lunch.

“I must admit I was surprised that your picture appeared. I thought that you live in the village, do not always get in touch.

– This is true. And therein lies the joy. I live far from Moscow, in the Ryazan region, in the places where Muslim was filmed. Volodya Ilyin brought me there. He has a house there, and I lived with them for a long time, I fell in love with this place. At first, many laughed: where am I and where is the village. I was going to buy a house in Tuscany, but ended up in a Ryazan village and stuck to it. I bought land and built a house on the stretch. But I’m always working. We haven’t finished the film yet, but we have a new script ready.

– So you live in the village by intellectual work? But your home requires care.

– I have an assistant. I can clean the floors myself. I have over 40 windows and it will take one half a summer to wash them. We wash windows together. She on one side, me on the other. So what? I washed the windows, dined, and in the evening I sat down to write.

– You were born in the village.

– My mother is a Petersburger, she graduated from the Herzen Institute, became a teacher of literature. After graduation, my parents were sent to work in a village near Staraya Russa, where much is connected with Dostoevsky. Parents lived there for about six months. And I was born there. And then dad and mom returned to their St. Petersburg apartment. My whole life was spent in St. Petersburg until I moved to Moscow.

— Did you shoot in the Nizhny Novgorod region?

– We have been looking for locations for six months, faced with the fact that the poorest Soviet sanatoriums have practically disappeared. But there are those where everything is covered with trembling plastic, with Turkish beds and stretch ceilings, where there is nothing to breathe, and in the dining rooms there is a stink of old overcooked food. There is nothing to shoot there. One vulgarity and stupid “wealth”. We are discouraged. It’s time to go on an expedition, but there is no sanatorium. Our artist and producer Yulia Timofeeva found a tuberculosis sanatorium built in 1903 by a doctor from St. Petersburg for orphans. A place of fantastic beauty, where those who have served 20–25 years, old people who have been defeated and tortured by tuberculosis and prison, are now being rehabilitated. We built something, repainted, brought furniture. There are marvelous corridors and doors, there is a feeling of anxiety.

– Have you tried to show “First Love” at foreign festivals?

— I am on good terms with many selectors. We don’t have any chance. Motivation is needed for the participation of a Russian film in the competition of a major world festival. Never in my life will I say about the house in which I live that it is disgusting. I can talk about it with my own, but not with strangers. To be completely honest, I’m only interested in the process. This probably sounds terrible, because cinema is an art that requires spectators sitting in the hall. I know that the picture will protect itself. I made her stable and she will find her audience. She is free from me, and I from her. We don’t need to meet again.