RUSSIAN RESURRECTION FILM FESTIVAL: Chilly cynicism and smug judgement are not great qualities in a romantic comedy-drama. Nor is barely legal sexiness but, despite featuring a star-making turn by his leading 'lady’, Roman Karimov’s Inadequate People asks audiences to accept all three, in large dollops.
The protagonist, Vitalik (Ilya Lyubimoff), is pretty messed up despite a new job and a small but comfortable apartment – he’s deep into personal therapy to combat alcohol dependency, anger management problems and issues of grief stemming from the car accident that killed his true love. That said, he’s a veritable rock compared to the stock rom-com supports writer/director Karimov constructs as everyday Russian citizens: a sex-obsessed boss (Yuliya Takshina) who seeks to dominate Vitalik in daily office trysts; an ice-cold co-worker (Anastasiya Fedorkova) who delights in Vitalik’s despairing plight; and a therapist (Yevgeni Tsyganov), who’s a short-tempered, bullying creep with his own dark urges.
The only truly human connection Vitalik is able to make is with his smart-mouth neighbour, 17-year-old Kristina (Ingrid Olerinskaya), a fellow outcast, distanced from her family thanks to adolescent angst and an intolerance of pretence. Vitalik is a translator for a glossy magazine and Kristina is struggling with school-level English (the two find a common language... geddit?), and soon they team up for late night city sojourns where they grow increasingly dependent upon one another. (This is especially true in Kristina’s dealings with Artem Dushkin’s Artur, a sexist suitor who constantly pushes Vitalik’s subdued buttons.)
Inadequate People unfolds on the back of some occasionally insightful dialogue staged in a series of otherwise over-scripted meet-cutes; there is a rhythmic haughtiness to the way everyone speaks, as if they all know they are in a quirky low-budgeter destined for festival adoration. This is not necessarily a bad attribute (ask fans of Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach), but all of Karimov’s characters bar Vitalik and Kristina come across as scantly-drawn devices rather than fleshed-out people. (Kristina’s mother Julia, played with warmth by Marina Zaytseva, is the only exception.)
Most contentious of all, Karimov plays his hand early on with a pointed reference to a certain New York-based Jewish comedian with a well-publicised predilection for very young women. The throwaway line seems odd at such an early juncture in the film, but its relevance (and associated awkwardness) emerges as the film progresses; the filmmaker’s thematic message seems to emerge as one of endorsement for love’s connection, regardless of age,
The matter of Russia’s historically low age of consent (as recently as 1998 it was 14, later raised to 16) might render this mismatched pairing commonplace, but that’s debatable.
Karimov’s thirty-something leading man is lean, square-jawed and slight of stature; his 17-year-old girl carries with her the worldview of someone twice her age and, in all frankness, exudes the come-hither allure of an experienced woman. Respectfully, the casting of Lyubimoff and Olerinskaya best serves the director’s intent in purely aesthetic terms. Some self-deprecating humour in the film’s final moments is not enough to dispel the morally-ambiguous nature of the film’s central romance, especially as the final scene is coupled with a peeping-tom POV shot through a car back window that seems especially insidious.
Karimov has packaged a Todd Solondz-like slice of squirm-cinema as an 'outsider romance’. But Solondz would have the guts to tell it like it is; Karimov gift-wraps it in coyness and idiosyncrasy.
