Direction: Kantemir Balagov
Country: Russia
Beanpole, the third feature from young Russian director Kantemir Balagov, is cooked with a gut-wrenching Bergman-esque agitation. Achingly performed, this grimly believable and often suffocating psychodrama set in the post-war Leningrad, features two talented newcomer actresses, Viktoria Miroshnichenko and Vasilisa Perelygina. The former is Iya, a traumatized survivor turned nurse in a hospital unit, and the latter is Masha, an anguished, exhausted, somewhat cynical soldier who returns from the front to pick up her three-year-old son, Pashka (Timofey Glazkov). The kid had been entrusted to Iya’s care, but died accidentally when his guardian was experiencing one of her episodic PTSD crisis.
The title, beanpole, arises from the fact that Iya is tall and thin. That’s her moniker. Consumed by guilt and nurturing a secret love for the barren Masha, Iya reluctantly accepts to become a surrogate mother for her friend. Masha had already planned everything and even picked the head of the hospital unit, Nikolay Ivanovych (Andrey Bykov), as the future father of her child.
Painful to watch, the film is permeated with angst, shallow hope, and an inner emptiness that is quite disturbing. It’s like if you, by observation of the two leads, could feel years of real misery and suffering. To reinforce this idea, the film includes a sad case of euthanasia.
Balagov, who was awarded in Cannes with the Un Certain Regard prize for best director, relies on close ups to express the women’s deep feelings as well as claustrophobic medium shots saturated in color that serve to expose the general instability and emotional devastation caused by the war.
