This movie is my first encounter with Balabanov's cinema,and I was really shocked,not so by the movie in itself,but by its rhetoric which is the most opposite one might imagine or expect from a Russian movie. I am deeply in doubt that this movie speaks about the pre-revolutionary pornographic film industry;it's a bleak,tragic,morbid,kinky gaze on the Russian bourgeoisie society in the beginning of the 20th century.Petersburg here has a lot from Schnitzler's or Freud's Vienna-it's a decomposed,moral corrupted and bored society.The way Balabanov films Petersburg is a reflection of this feelings;it remembered me "Death in Venice" by Visconti-the unforgettable travel on Neva,and generally the outdoor scenes seem in the way that another Russian master,Sokurov filmed,in "Father and Son" the city. It's clear that this atmosphere is the same one that Freud encountered in Vienna,the same pathological sexual explorations,which mirror a convulsion and basically corrupted personality.Everything is,in a way,out of joint in the characters, Johann and Vladimir that are a very bekettian couple-remember Colin and Vladimir from "waiting for Godot",or Clov an Hamm from Endgame-they lack logic,and even psychology;Putilov,and his Bakunin-friendly look is a clumsy and impotent man,to say nothing about women,very Russian in their next to pleasure victim role.
This is an uneasy,difficult,but also rewarding movie.If you want to see pornographic stuff,BDSM,or spanking,this is not your movie,sorry.
This is an uneasy,difficult,but also rewarding movie.If you want to see pornographic stuff,BDSM,or spanking,this is not your movie,sorry.