4

The setup for Ilya Khrzhanovsky's debut feature is simple enough: Three total strangers meet in a Moscow bar, swap lies and go their separate ways. What follows is a nightmarish vision of contemporary Russia in which even the countryside, that venerable symbol of Soviet strength and purity, seems under a grotesque spell. The lies these strangers tell one another have nothing to do with who they really are: Prostitute Marina (Mariia Vovchenko) claims to be an advertising executive; Oleg (Yuri Laguta), a meat salesman, tells the others that he's a civil servant responsible for supplying the Kremlin with mineral water; and piano tuner Volodya (Sergei Shnurov) tells the ...