Generational and class divisions in contemporary Russia function as the terrain upon which Zvyangintsev constructs his vision of, as one of the characters names them, ‘the cruel laws of reality’.
A wealthy quarter in Moscow and the poverty-ridden counterpart on its outskirts are the setting for this accomplished melodrama. Elena (Nadezhda Markina), a housewife in her late fifties, is the second wife of the well-off Vladimir (Andrei Smirnov). Worried about her son, Sergey (Alexey Rozin), who is unemployed and thus unable to provide for his own family, Elena fights a constant battle with her husband’s tight-fistedness. Vladimir’s spite towards his parasitic son is encapsulated in his reaction to Elena’s maternal indulgence: ‘Why should I pay for a stranger?’.
Estrangement permeates the emotional fabric of the relationships between husband and wife, as well as between parents and offspring, and emerges through Zvyangintsev’s artfully crafted aesthetic choices. The opening sequence presents the nature of Elena and Vladimir’s relationship through a series of static shots showing the many rooms in their flat: luxurious and immaculate, yet devoid of warmth. The first shot, compellingly extended, takes a view of the flat at dawn through the tree branches outside. Slowly everything comes into focus – as slowly as the apparently one-dimensional relationships show the complexity of their texture – in a composition where the only noticeable movement is given by a bird suddenly moving its head towards the flat, and another bird reaching the empty branches.
‘I was never your reason to exist … money is,’ she says to him at his hospital bed…
From the noise of the outside we are brought to the chilling silence of the interior. Amongst the many items of the furniture on display, we see a picture of a girl. Katerina (Yelena Lyadova), Vladimir’s daughter, is introduced to us framed in her childhood. As the unfolding of events will reveal, this is the last stage of her life when she was innocent, loving and optimistic. This is all that remains of a happiness between father and daughter that resurges occasionally between the adult, embittered Katerina (‘I was never your reason to exist … money is,’ she says to him at his hospital bed) and her still hoping father.
Elena eventually brings life to this sequence of still shots when the camera frames her by her bed as she wakes up. Sitting by the side of the bed, with feeble rays of light coming
from the window opposite, Elena’s spiritual attitude is reminiscent of Edward Hopper’s painting “Morning Sun”. The same shot will appear towards the end of the film: formally the same, but this time Elena is now a widow, rising from bed straight away and performing her morning duties with surprisingly rapidity.
… a courteously despotic husband whose warmest comment to her is ‘The porridge is perfect’.
A rigorous attention to the lighting of each frame adds to the richness of Zvyangintsev’s creative and detailed mise-en-scene: the ice-cold light blue of the fridge she opens in the morning returns repeatedly as the same colour of the marble walls of the bathroom, and as the intermittent lights of the constantly switched on TV of the background, embedding her life in the flat in sterile austerity. A variety of colours outside, even in the shabby flats on the outskirts, and a warmer light in Sergei’s cramped home, contrast with the controlled emotions which Elena must bear, faced with a courteously despotic husband whose warmest comment to her is ‘The porridge is perfect’.
Elena’s unconditional love towards the men she cares for is saintly, one might say – when she goes to church to pray for Vladimir’s health after the stroke, her reflection on the glass covering the painting of the Saints harmoniously blends within it. She bears their ingratitude: Sergei is capable of a smile only when she brings him a huge sum of money to support his family, allowing him to remain jobless and drink and smoke all day. Nothing is monochromatic in this film, and ELENA offers an endless range of facets, formally and thematically, that until the very last shot – only seemingly a repeat of the first one – will not fail to captivate the emotions of the spectators as well as offering deep aesthetic pleasure.
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