Two strangely clad children walk the city streets on Christmas Eve as falling snow gently envelops everything in a powdery layer of magic. The pale-skinned youths look like a cross between dethroned royalty and homeless bums: the boy wears a luxuriously patterned coat and the girl a delicate muff, while both sport striking dark circles under their eyes.
It is a deep, dark night and Alena (Lena Kostyuk) and Nikita (Roma Burlaka) are alone after the death of their mother. Her meagre bequests – a princely coat made of curtain fabric and a queenly muff knit with loving care – are all the protection her children have against the world. Terrified at the thought of being separated, the stepbrother and stepsister board a train in search of their fathers in the big, bad city.
Kira Muratova spins her majestic web slowly and purposefully, weaving together alternating vignettes of her beloved duo. This fairy-tale world is not conjured out of thin air, but rather gives us a different take on what's already there: a train station haunted with the memory of a long-lost father; a department store doubling as Ali Baba's cave and the nine circles of hell; a clandestine street that refuses to be found. On their bizarre journey, the children discover endless rows of houses posing as shop windows to a vast array of lifestyles, with each door representing a different version of what we know and love: friends, family and shelter. But these motherless waifs are thrown out of every building.
Succumbing to Muratova's charming mercilessness, the stepsiblings learn their lesson over and over again: though we wish they could both live happily ever after, some people can never really find a place to call home.
Dimitri Eipides
Kira Muratova was born in Soroca, Romania (now in Moldova), and lives in Ukraine. She studied filmmaking at the Russian State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK) in Moscow. Her films include
Our Honest Bread (64),
Short Encounters (67), A
Long Goodbye (71),
Getting to Know the Big Wide World (79),
Among Grey Stones (83),
Change of Fortune (87),
TheAsthenic Syndrome (89),
TheSentimental Policeman (92),
Passions (94),
Three Stories (97),
Second Class Citizens (01),
Chekhov's Motifs (02),
The Tuner (04),
Two in One (07) and
Melody for a Street Organ (09).