ARNIKOVNI EFFECT (GREENHOUSE EFFECT)
Russia, 2005, 93 minutes, Colour.
Elena Polyakova, Alexander Yakin.
Directed by Valery Akhadov.
Greenhouse Effect screened in the international competition at the Montreal Film Festival in 2005. It is a strange entry, much more like a soap opera and a television film or series rather than a Russian feature film. This is also surprising because the director, Valery Akhadov, born in Uzbekistan in 1945, is a veteran of Soviet and Russian cinema.
The setting is contemporary Moscow and the focus on a street boy – one of the healthiest on-screen ever, very shrewd, something of an advertisement that living on the streets in Russia couldn't be too bad. Into his life comes a young pregnant woman from the countryside – again, a rather irritating character who does not act in a commonsense way at all. She teams up with the boy, expects the world to fall at her feet, yells at her mother while telling her mother not to yell at her. She eventually, almost miraculously and without benefit of obvious passport control, finds a home in Greece.
There are various other people from the streets, the sympathetic surgeon, a boy dying of a tumour. The film is set not only amongst the street people but amongst migrant peoples to Russia. To that extent, it offers a glimpse of life in the Russian capital at the beginning of the 21st century. However, the plot belies belief as do the characters and the film is very disappointing.
1. The quality of the film – more of a television movie? Popular entertainment?
2. The Moscow settings, the railway stations, the factories, homes? The streets? The tourist touch? The musical score?
3. The title – not a reference to conservation but to the greenhouse where the young boy, Mute, takes refuge?
4. The plausibility of the plot, the well-fed young boy and his survival? The girl coming to the city pregnant and her being able to survive – despite improbabilities? The realism or fantasy of the ending with her arrival in Greece, the inhabitants of the house having died, her taking possession and living there?
5. The story of Mute, his stealing, surviving in the greenhouse? His making up back-stories about his being Egyptian, his learning Greek? His friend in the hospital, going to visit him – and the pathos of his death? His angers? His meeting Rita, helping her, trying to find the address? Her sharing in his adventures? Going to the hospital, the anger with the surgeon? The surgeon helping him? The rendezvous at the run-down car, bringing his ashes? Rita and her going to Greece, his hoping to go? The credibility of this kind of street boy?
6. Rita, young and inexperienced, vague, arriving at the station, her luggage being stolen? Trying to get help from the mute? His gradually helping her, her staying with him, their searching for the house? Her tantrums? Phone call to her mother and yelling at her (while telling her mother not to yell at her)? Her pregnancy? The ability to get to Greece – without papers? Settling in Greece?
7. The life at the station, the various people, the shopkeepers, the owners of the restaurant, their giving jobs to the mute and to Rita? The greenhouse?
8. The young man, his illness, in hospital, the operation, his death?
9. The surgeon, his consideration, coping with the mute and his grief, arranging for the cremation, giving the ashes – and Rita and the mute scattering them?
10. The cheery picture of life in the streets in Moscow? Compared with reality?
