Since the fall of Soviet Communism, cinema from the former USSR has concentrated on dour dramas lamenting the inequities of the departed system and the inadequacies of the new. Despite a strong sense of beating a dead horse, THE YEAR OF THE DOG has a brilliant pair of central performances
and an eerie setting for its screed.
Nervy, tattooed Seryoscha Khozin (Igor Skljar) has spent 17 of his 30 years in prison. Paroled, he rejects his family and fixates instead on Vera Morozova (Inna Churikova), a divorced, middle-aged food inspector whose pocketbook he's pinched. She takes a somewhat motherly romantic interest in the
rebellious punk and takes him to tony art events. Afterwards, however, Vera's landlord argues with Seryoscha, who fatally stabs him. Still attired in formal wear, Vera flees with Seryoscha to the countryside, where the fugitives come across a picturesque village miraculously deserted except for a
few animals. After setting up housekeeping in one of the well-stocked residences, the couple finally realize the nature of their safe haven: it's quarantined due to radiation leaking from a nearby nuclear power plant. Three men arrive to cart off goods for the black market and try to kill
Seryoscha, but Vera unexpectedly bushwacks them, and the trio, stripped of their breathing filters, wake up in the local jail, Seryoscha enjoying their torment ("You will address me as Citizen Commander of the Free Zone!"). The ex-con serves special bile to Lubanov (Aleksandr Feklistov), the
village's former teacher of Marxism, now its lead looter. After acting as judge, warden and taskmaster of the prisoners, Seryoscha develops a camaraderie with his hostages, and ultimately lets them go. Strangely happy, Vera and Seryoscha make no move to leave their toxic "Free Zone," and the
latter almost seems to expect it when he's shot down by vengeful, uncomradely Lubanov.
As the born-to-lose outlaw who can commit robbery and sing underground protest songs with equal high spirits, Skljar is a dangerously magnetic personality who keeps THE YEAR OF THE DOG energized even through its long, long stretches of intense political discourse. He makes a potent odd-couple
match for veteran actress Inna Churikova (ADAM'S RIB), whose Vera comes across as often deluded and mildly scatterbrained--but never pathetic--in her simple, good-hearted wish for a better life. Their mutual attraction seems based less on sex or Oedipus complexes than an unspoken shared belief
that society failed both of them. The "luxurious" ghost town in past years would have been a dense cinematic metaphor, but in Russia's post-Chernobyl era it's a convenient true-to-life conceit that provides an ironic arena for director-co-writer Semyon Aranovich driving in one of the more
memorable of the many nails in Communism's coffin. YEAR OF THE DOG won a Silver Bear at the 1994 Berlin Film Festival. (Violence, adult situations, profanity, substance abuse.) leave a comment