Mermaid [Rusalka] (Melikyan, 2007)

[madali]

Mermaid [Rusalka] (Anna Melikyan, 2007)

Comparisons with "Amelie" was enough for me to seek this film out. But it is a bit weird comparing Russia cinema to anything "cute". How can anything Russian be cute? Well, I guess, Russia was able to somehow make this film, because it does, small spoiler here, make someone major die in the end.

Apparently, the movie is based loosely on the original "The Little Mermaid" story, but without the mermaid parts. It's just a quirky girl falling in love with a guy.

I loved the film initially, especially the girl as a young child. Once she becomes a teenager, I started to slightly lose interest, and its length, did make it stretch a bit. The Russian theatre version, according to IMDB, was 100 mins, but the version I watched was 115 mins, and I think it's possible that this 15 minutes could have made all the difference in the world.

3/5

[X.]

The most delirious Russian film I saw recently (though the film itself is not recent) was 4. The director Ilya Khrzhanovskiy' new film DRAU was shot by one of my favorite up-and-coming cinematographers Lol Crawley.

Check out Ilya. He's fucking insane.

[madali]

4 sounds intesresting. Goes in my list.

[kaytee]

4 sounds intesresting. Goes in my list.

Let me know if you find it on kff?

[madali]

The name probably makes it a bit difficult to find!