The bride was in a black taxi – Weekend – Kommersant
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Starting today, Kinopoisk and Wink are starting to show the thriller Frozen Ground by Oksana Karas. By all plot signs, this is a solid detective story in the spirit of non-standard HBO and BBC works, but its events unfold in the Leningrad region, among Soviet architecture and northern landscapes. The main role is played by Svetlana Khodchenkova, whose heroine can do anything – work in a taxi, bake cakes for sale, raise a child and fight the invincible system for the freedom of her fiancé.
On a cold April night in 2022, a girl in a red coat escapes from a restaurant, calls for a car, and in the morning her raped body is found on the shore of a nearby lake. Suspicion inevitably falls on local taxi drivers, those who were on shift. The fictional regional center of the Leningrad Region called Ozersk, where the events of the Frozen Land unfold, is a small city, everyone knows everyone here, and the local lazy investigative committee acts almost overkill: first they take one driver, then another, and then it’s Max’s turn (Anton Filipenko), who allegedly bombed along with his fiancee Larisa (Svetlana Khodchenkova) and, it seems, had nothing to do with it, but still there is circumstantial evidence. Local detectives sleep and see how to quickly knock out a confession or, conversely, slow down. Anything to keep from working. After all, this is not their first unsolved case (“three girls disappeared in two years, one surfaced”). But the trouble is, from Moscow to Ozersk they send a corrosive investigator Orlov (Yuri Chursin). And he decided to find and imprison the culprit at all costs, although he was forced to spend most of his time and energy trying to fight off Larisa, who was ready to do anything just to discourage her fiancé from the investigation.
In the plot circumstances of the Frozen Land, at first glance, something painfully familiar seems to be. At least for those viewers who do not neglect the products of HBO and the BBC. A quiet town, serious crimes that add up to a series, a suspect in which neither the viewer nor the main character is completely sure, a harsh investigator who came to the province from the capital. All this is to some extent cliches and clichés, and if you start naming foreign detectives with similar initial data, you probably won’t be able to do it in half a day. The “frozen land”, in general, does not hide its pedigree – from “Meir of Easttown” to the Scandinavian neo-noirs, here all the genre mechanics traditional for recent years are in sight, and, perhaps, this is good. Firstly, because it allows you to evaluate the adaptability of solid foreign formats to native aspens, and secondly, it gives reason to admire the talents of the main performers. It is traditionally believed that for a big star a multi-part detective story, drowned in everyday realities familiar to every viewer, is an excellent opportunity to demonstrate to the audience their acting skills.
And here the brilliant Svetlana Khodchenkova turns out to be such a big star. “Frozen Land” is her acting benefit performance. If in the newly released “Actresses” she, even playing a bright role, was only one of many, then here she carries a multi-part film on her shoulders. Her character is a kind of new interpretation of the classic Nekrasov Russian woman: a taxi driver, a self-employed confectioner, a single mother for a teenage daughter (the convincing Polina Gukhman), she managed to part with her abusive husband (the convincingly nasty Andrei Burkovsky), become happy again in a new marriage , can stand up for himself and earn for himself, and if he sometimes cries from impotence, then only by checking whether the door is well closed. A citizen of Russia needs to be strong and persistent, a bit like a radio in a taxi, and especially a citizen. It is invariably interesting to look at Khodchenkova, she is convincing and weak, and strong, and doubting, and pushing through. It is clear that partly this authenticity is provided by the plot of a still pool unfolding before our eyes, where the devils are found, and partly by partners on the screen. In the background is a powerful cast: Yuri Chursin as a watchdog of justice in a scary car with a red stripe, and the dangerous psychopath Andrey Burkovsky, and Vitaly Kovalenko as a brutal avenger – they all make the presence of the heroine Khodchenkova a little more voluminous and contrast.
Perhaps the secret of the Frozen Land’s authenticity lies in the fact that Oksana Karas, who directed this detective thriller, does not like straightforward effects. Visually, the series is made discreetly, it does not have the atmosphere of later films about maniacs, the ambient horror that everyone has learned thanks to David Fincher. Due to its deceptive simplicity, the Frozen Ground sometimes looks like everyday life in the style of daytime free television (the kitchen becomes one of the important locations here, and the interior of an economy class car is the second most important), but its content is far from superficial. The fear in which the main character lives and fights for herself and her loved ones can be easily interpreted as part of our common daily routine of the last year. And from this, on the one hand, it can become really bad, but on the other hand, there is still some hope when you see how a lonely woman enters a burning hut and challenges the system, reshaping the out-of-hand world into an understandable one. fret. And at the same time he decorates the cake, drives the car, brings up the child, in general, lives. The earth may be frozen, but spring is inevitable.
Watch: Kinopoisk, Wink
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