Surely at another time, the premiere of the new series of the MTS Media and the film company “Mediaslovo” “Mutual Violence” would be the subject of active discussion. Today it is much more difficult for this work to either be in the news or, on the contrary, to reach the consciousness of citizens who want something soothing away from it altogether.
There is neither one nor the other in the series, which has been shown once a week since March 18 at the Kion online cinema. It tells the story of a raped woman who decides to blame her top abusers. The victim is played by Svetlana Ivanova, who is widely known for the series “Pregnancy Test”, but this time she does not show recognizable wit or overwhelming female charm. The new image of her heroine is a seriously injured woman in a difficult psychological situation. It is difficult for him to sympathize, because he behaves strangely and, most importantly, is not ready to conform to the usual image of the victim, whose main virtues are weakness and humility. Anna Fedorova, a teacher of Russian language and literature, independent, smart, beautiful, for some reason returned from Moscow to her hometown, where she studied for several years at an elite college. But we do know him in a situation that hardly resembles a respectable school setting: battered and frightened, in a bright red cocktail dress with a slit on the back, he literally lands on the seashore after jumping off a yacht. reach the police station and report rape.
This statement is of no interest to anyone – not just the cops who have a headache at the end of their tenure, the doctors who fix the wounds, nor the school officials who have to explain themselves to the students. ‘ for the best friend of the protagonist, who neither her parents nor her husband turned out to be accused of gang rape. It would be better for everyone if he kept quiet, kept quiet, put up with the humiliation silently. The only person to support the explanation is a shrewd former researcher, but we don’t really understand the purpose of his doing this, it’s just that he clearly has no sympathy for the victim. The rapists, of course, turn out to be powerful people – the urban elite – and it is clear that they are trying to close the case, blame the teacher and incite the public against him. However, the situation is beyond their control.
Anna Fedorova was raped, but the audience was not shown exactly how this happened, so they have reason not to trust her, especially since, as it turned out, she has a questionable past. She showed a student her breasts for reading the novel Silent Streams of Don; once had an affair with one of the rapists and had asked her for money shortly before the incident; and, as it turned out, she never left Moscow because her mother, with whom she had a difficult relationship, had a microcoup. Yes, and the investigator quietly collecting information about the accused is also not entirely clean, he has his own purposes. In the third series, events are already developing quite quickly, especially since the action is twice as stalemate, and the more we are told about the past, the more difficult the present turns out to be.
So far, viewers have seen only three episodes – half of the first season, and it is already clear that unexpected turns of the script await them. The producers said it took about six years to work on it and that filming began in August last year. In the end, the story was written by several screenwriters under the direction of Valery Todorovsky, the not very successful film “Big”, the film “Masha” at the Kinotavr festival, and Anna Palchikova, for whom the script recorded its debut. Vladimir Mirzoev’s film “His name was Mumu”. The task of the screenwriters was to create sharp plots, such a paradoxical modifier, in which, as it now seems, a new skeleton unfolds at each stage of the development of the story. But the most interesting thing in this series is not in the already banal conflict, in which an innocent victim cannot achieve justice due to the indifference of law enforcement agencies and the omnipotence of the authorities. We’ve seen this many times already, and this unfortunate but trite case would hardly concern Valeria Gai Germanika, a director who has always admired the sharp and even shocking. The world of cinema he created is always filled with violence and disaster, literally shining through the destruction of carefully guarded kindness, and Germanicus is the best at visualizing this process.
Anna Fedorova, a fragile blonde with her lips stubbornly clenched, continues on her destructive path, becoming the trigger of inevitable changes, conflicts that arise, deceptions and betrayals. The quiet and familiar fakeness of life has been hacked, the avalanche of secrets seems illogical, but the actors: Svetlana Ivanova, Anna Snitkina, Olga Lapshina, Maria Golubkina and the master Andrey Kozlov, who almost played the investigator in the first place, from the television show “What? Where? When?” – they keep things true with their convincing authenticity.
Honestly, the next three episodes are going to blow all preconceptions, so I won’t make any assumptions about the finale. But the interesting thing is that in recent years, already a mother of three children, a happy wife and a grateful daughter, Germanika is looking for support in the family, in love, forgiveness and in search of mutual understanding. His last feature was the documentary The Pope, in which he explored his relationship with his stepfather and, through him, his late mother, with the honesty of a true documentarian. This very personal story turned out to be lyrical and soft, although the director retained the sharpness of the transitions characteristic of the style of Lera Germanicus.
The series is a very difficult, specific genre, the situation has a set of rules, including the final requirement, which must be resolved morally. So far, in the three episodes shown, the writers have only destroyed the world, they must finally reunite it – well, or show why it must be destroyed. And here I am hoping for unexpected solutions. Making the prediction of the end tense and desirable is a great skill that I think can be demonstrated in this situation. What is really curious is whether the writers of the series will be able to reduce their content to the mutual destruction of the avenging parties.
The author expresses his personal opinion, which may not coincide with the editors’ position.
Source: Gazeta
