Lyrical and laconic road movie Koktebel follows a widowed father (Igor Chernevich) and his 11-year-old son (Gleb Puskepalis) as they embark on foot on an epic journey south from Moscow to the Crimean town of Koktebel. Hitching rides, they carry out odd-jobs at strangers' houses along the way in return for food and shelter. Dad wants to stay for a few months with the single female doctor (Agrippina Steklova), who treats his gunshot wounds; the kid however is determined to press on alone to the Black Sea.
Co-directed by two young Russian filmmakers Boris Khlebnikov and Alexei Popogrebsky, Koktebel is a film in which the viewer is asked to draw on their powers of contemplation. There's little in the way of dialogue or plot here - instead the often fixed camera gazes at wildlife or at the giant landscapes through which the characters traverse.
"EFFECTIVELY UNDERSTATED PERFORMANCES"
Significant details relating to past events emerge very gradually. It transpires that dad is widowed, that he has lost his engineering job, and that he is battling a drink problem. His child meanwhile is obsessed about flight: he's transfixed by stories about albatrosses, believes when he closes his eyes that he can see things from a great height, and, at Koktebel itself, heads for the gliding monument (an abandoned site that's in keeping with the film's vision of an economically shattered post-Soviet Russia).
The directors have elicited effectively understated performances from their lead actors, especially from the taciturn Puskepalis. Koktebel's misfortune is that it is released just six months after Andrei Zvyagintsev's excellent The Return, a more emotionally compelling tale of a father and his two sons embarking on a mysterious and ultimately tragic journey.
Koktobel is released in UK cinemas on Friday 31st December 2004.
Koktobel (2004)
