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Vladimir Vysotskiy and Kira Muratova in Brief Encounters |
Cast: Kira Muratova, Nina Ruslanova, Vladimir Vysotskiy, Lidiya Bazilskaya, Olga Viklandt, Aleksey Glazyrin, Valeri Isakov, Tatyana Midnaya, Kirill Marinchenko, Svetlana Nimolyaeva, Grigoriy Kogan. Screenplay: Kira Muratova, Leonid Zhukovitsky. Cinematography: Gennady Karyuk. Production design: Aleksandra Konardova, Oleg Perederiy. Film editing: O. Kharakova. Music: Oleg Karavaychuk.
Kira Muratov's first feature, Brief Encounters, is a deftly handled romantic drama about a middle-aged woman, Valentina (Muratova), her not-so-faithful husband, Maksim (Vladimir Vysotskiy), and a pretty young woman, Nadya (Nina Ruslanova), whom Valentina hires as a housekeeper. What neither Valentina nor Nadya realizes when the hiring takes place is that Nadya and Maksim have already met. The process of discovering that fact and dealing with it constitutes the plot. In the meantime, we see the satire-tinged portrait of Valentina's life as a bureaucrat in the city of Odesa, dealing with contractors who cut corners and people anxious to occupy the apartment houses they're building. Muratova wittily fragments the narrative, with flashbacks to the on-the-road encounter of Nadya and Maksim, who is a geologist exploring the rural Ukraine that Nadya is eager to leave. It's the kind of movie whose narrative technique demands attention, but it's also engaging enough that you want to go back and watch it again once you've sorted out the relationships of the characters.