perica-43151 This is one rich movie of one of the most respected Russian directors of the turn of the millennium (Cargo 200, Brother 1 and 2), in his most stylistic edition.The movie has a Dostoevskian feel to it, and is extremely cynical. A psychopathic and art producing pimp and his menacing henchmen, his evil murderous sister, a corrupt girl and adulterous wife meeting their fate, a seemingly innocent but ultimately plagiarizing thief of a youth, a pervert maid and dirty old nanny, an alcoholic perverted kid who has a Siamese brother, perhaps one of the only three moral characters, who are all met or faced with death, all inhabit this fictional universe. Unloved unselfish husband and famous doctor, a good engineer with a weak heart and several other characters die or are offed in most leisurely and fun ways. This bleak but realistic portrayal of the human condition is a reflection of the Yeltsin perverted era in which this masterpiece was produced. The movie is very reflective and well done. It has a well placed and impeccably paced misanthropy for which the now deceased director is famous, director who despite of his immense talent, probably rots in Hell. Not because he is necessarily evil, but because he is exactly the kind of amusing character Devil would like to have a company of. He feels quite at home there, if indeed there is such a place, observing the inhabitants of doom with the same detached amusement and artistic wit he demonstrated aptly in his cinematic gems.

vitaky2001 Sade. Geometry was the pervert marquis's true passion and so it is for the director of this film. In the pornographic writings of the famous prisoner of Bastille, desire is abstracted into highly complex angular figures composed of pleasure and pain-seeking bodies. Likewise, Balabanov loathes primitive melodramatic triangles and presents the viewer with a decagon. The result is an aesthetic study of that particular blend of suffering and pleasure, of exhibitionism and voyeurism, of evil and good… of freaks and men, that no number of spoilers in this review can compromise the pleasure of watching.The film starts with a triptych as the viewers are presented with Yohan (a clandestine pornographer in early 20th century St. Petersburg), a little girl Liza who will grow up into his Justine and a pair of Siamese twins adopted by the unhappily married doctor Stasov (they will become pornographers' prey too). Nevertheless, the key to Balabanov's contemplative pleasure is symmetry. His characters form symbolic (and real) pairs that interact with one another. In this symmetrical structure there is hardly a development that does not involve or is not brought about by any given couple of personages.Engineer Radlov and Doctor Stasov are friends and heads of the two households who will see the end of their happiness and meet their own ends as a result of encounter with the corrupting world of pornography. Both are well-meaning naives: the former dies from heart attack after learning that his shy daughter Liza exposes herself in masochist compositions before camera. The latter is killed never realizing that his unloving wife with the misty unseeing eyes does the same.The chambermaids of the two houses, Grunya and Daria, serve as a conduit of corruptive influence. The latter is an eager model of the pornographers that seduces the Siamese twins. The latter is a secret mistress of engineer Radlov to whom he bequeaths his property and custody of Liza not knowing that Grunya is in fact Johan's sister.Yohan has an alter ego in the person of his assistant, an aspiring pornographer Victor Ivanovich. Yohan is a foreigner who features thick hair, an unsmiling countenance and cold autistic eyes warmed only by the masochist spectacle. Victor Ivanovich could not be more Russian in both name and appearance, is absolutely bold and always eerily cheerful. Whereas the object of Yohan's voyeuristic passion is Liza, Victor Ivanovich dreams of the Siamese.The inseparable brothers are in a way the key element of the entire composition. Most unmistakably twins of all the paired characters, Kolia and Tolia embody the lighter and the darker side of human nature. The latter succumbs to the lure of the chambermaid's bare breast, while the latter indignantly rejects it. Forced to a glass of vodka before the first filming, Tolia eagerly takes to drinking, whereas Kolia remains virtuously sober to the very end. This makes the twins emblematic of that peculiar blend of humanity and freakishness - displayed by nearly each character and face in the film – that provides Balabanov's philosophical bottom-line.Yohan's old and half-witted nanny who delivers punishment in the masochist mis-en-scenes and the young director of photography Putilov constitute the final pair. They stand at the opposite ends of the camera and facilitate the spectacle in a purely technical way. The former is Liza's whip wielding nemesis, who seems to be unaware of her role; the latter is her self-proclaimed saviour, who defaults on his promise. Having failed to extricate Liza from the squalid net of which he is himself an element, Putilov disappears and immediately thereafter Johan's nanny dies.The disappearance of this pair announces the implosion of the entire decagon. Yohan collapses in an epileptic fit (a kind of temporary death), whereas Victor Ivanovich meets his real death at the hands of Kolia, who fires a gun picked from Yohan's pocket in an attempt to save Liza, whom he desperately loves. Released from the grip of the geometry of desire, Liza parts with Kolia (and, of course, Tolia). She takes the train to the West (something that she contemplated since the beginning of the film), while they board and eastbound ship in order to realize their intent to find their father.The train and the ship, or rather the engine and the boat, in fact constitute an additional (non-human) symbolic pair. Periodic appearances of engine on the screen (engineer Radlov's house stands near a railway) announce new episodes in Liza's pornographic career. A steam boat takes Yohan and Viktor Ivanovich to each new accomplishment in their sordid activity. Both the engine and the steamboat represent the antagonistic unity of fire and water, water and metal, metal and fire… To be sure, humanity is always chased by its freakish shadow which is suggested by the film's soundtrack. Never reaching the South-East Asia, the Siamese end up on a concert tour around Russia performing the same song about train that they rehearsed before their soon-to-be-corrupted adoptive mother. Tolia drinks himself to death and is bemoaned by Kolia, who is sure to follow his brother in a short time.In an unidentified "western" town to which the engine takes her, Liza hears the same melody that accompanies the opening scene of the film - the countess's aria from Gretry's Richard the Lion Heart. Popularized in Russia by Tchaikovsky, who included it into his Queen of Spades, the aria expresses the irresistibility of desire. Accordingly, Liza heads for the local red light district where she is seduced by a leather-clad male prostitute with a whip in his hand. Back in St. Petersburg, Yohan steps on the melting ice of the Neva river, after watching for the very last time the film with his nanny whipping Liza's bottom. Masoch

daneldorado "Pro urodov i lyudej" (Aleksei Balabanov, 1998) is a dark, quixotic look at the earliest days of underground film making in Russia. One of its most interesting features is that the entire film is shot in sepia tone rather than full color, no doubt to emphasize the dreariness of its subject. There are a few outdoor scenes that show us a blue sky, but aside from that the entire film is rendered in that muted sepia color.The sad-faced, willowy Dinara Drukarova plays Lisa, a young woman who is imprisoned in her own family home and forced to pose nude for the camera, being whipped on screen for the pleasure of a few depraved male customers. After several months of captivity, Lisa escapes and heads for the big city to make a new life for herself... but discovers that the degrading scenes she has been posing for have become a fixation for her.The title translates into English as "Of Freaks and Men."The "freaks" part comes in when we are introduced to young Siamese twins, joined at the waist.But as the film progresses, we perceive that the twins are the least "freaky" characters in the film.Though the scenario is admittedly somber, there is a richness of tone and a strong storyline driving the film forward. We want to know what ultimately happens to the heroine, Lisa, and to the young conjoined twins. "Of Freaks and Men" is justly celebrated for these compelling virtues.

jandesimpson Every so often one has the pleasure of discovering a film so unusual that it seems that nothing has influenced it in its creation of a world all its own. One such was David Lynch's "Eraserhead", another, Charles Laughton's "Night of the Hunter" and now to join the august company is Alexsei Balabanov's "Of Freaks and Men". By dressing up a most scurrilous plot in images of extraodinary elegance and beauty the director has created an astonishingly original entertainment. Turn of the century St. Petersburg is hauntingly captured in beautiful sepia visuals of waterways and bridges, classical exteriors and upper class salons. But behind this facade the very devil is at work in the form of a gang of pornographic photographers who insinuate themselves into the lives of two respectable families whom they summarily proceed to corrupt. In due course the daughter of a highly respected engineer is enjoying having her naked buttocks spanked by an old crone in front of the camera, while the blind wife of a doctor in the other household becomes infatuated with another member of the gang who is only there to satisfy his paedophiliac fascination with the adolescent boy Siamese twins she and her husband have adopted. And this only for starters! As things go from bad to worse and goings on become more depraved - although admittedly we see no more than the odd spanking - the visuals become ever more beautiful particularly when the twins travel to the snowbound east and the girl travels west to wander a townscape of blowing autumn leaves. I think Balabanov is trying to say something about the voyeuristic nature of the camera and the progress of photography from still to moving pictures. To probe for deeper meanings wound not be very fruitful from a film whose raison d'etre, I suspect, is simply to intrigue and delight.