Window To Paris

Beneath this bumptious fantasy, about a magical window in St. Petersburg that opens onto the rooftops of Paris, lies a grim subtext--the bleakness of life in post-Soviet Russia. It's easy to root for the Russian protagonists, a drunken rabble who wreak gleeful havoc on the gleaming, sophisticated French capital. This isn't the real Paris, of course, but Paris as it exists in the fevered imaginations of perpetually strapped ex-Soviets. On one level, Russian director Yuri Mamin's film can be read as a sly critique of contemporary Russia's misguided idealization of Western-style capitalism. Subtexts aside, it's boorish, anarchic fun.