NEAREST AND DEAREST/ BLIZKIE
Russia, 2017, 90 minutes, Colour.
Directed by Ksenya Zueva.
This is a very grim and bleak Russian film, reflecting aspects of contemporary society, adults lacking the ability to put values into practice, handing this on to their children who seem even more lost. This film is in the vein of the Oscar-nominated film by Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Loveless, which explores these themes with greater complexity and power.
The final sequence seems particularly bleak – the four members of the family out in the snowclad countryside, a long shot, a train passing by in the background and then out of sight. What is the family left with? Have they undergone experiences which will lead them to a better life? (This is the tone of the synopsis on the IMDb, indicating that they have gone through a tragic experience which is cathartic – this may be so but it is not quite cathartic for the audience.)
The film focuses on a music teacher, her urging a young student who is nervous and sad to sing better. However, at home, the wife is always angry, continually criticising her teenage daughter, clashing with her husband who then demands a divorce. There is also a son but he seems absent from home so much of the time.
The mother then becomes desperate, mutilates her hands, her husband coming home from an affair with a young woman, but being touched by his wife, bandaging her wounds, taking her out to dinner where he is exuberant with karaoke. The daughter has problems at school, wanting to lie down in the infirmary, wanting drugs, coming home and arguing with her mother, stealing from her mother, going out on the town with a friend, sexual encounter, her pouring out her heart to him and his encouragement but when she goes to his house the next day, he is involved with another girl. And the boy meets his friend, goes to his home and meets a family which is very friendly, a genial vodka-drinking father, but, on the way home, he is bashed and left.
The focal point for the possible catharsis is in the wife’s mother, and 80 feel-year-old lady. Nurses come in an urge that she needs care. She is observant is in what is happening with the family, especially with her granddaughters stealing money. However, she decides to go out, dresses up, leaves a note which actually falls behind a table and is not seen by the family who discover the next morning that she is not at home. They go to the police but are not encouraged because this kind of thing happens often. It has an effect on the two children and the whole family goes out to search for the woman. The mother eventually finds the note goes to the house we she has gone to visit.
It is enigmatic about what happens to the old lady, seen initially in a train, seen at the end in a train (probably that which is passing by the couple out in the countryside).
In many ways, the film seems nihilistic – and makes audiences wonder about contemporary Russian society.
