You I Love

You I Love
Ya lyublyu tebya (2004)

Directed by
Olga Stolpovskaja
Dmitry Troitsky

Writing credits
Olga Stolpovskaja
Alisa Tanskaya

Credited cast:
Damir Badmaev....Uloomji
Lyubov Tolkalina....Vera Kirillova
Evgeny Koryakovsky....Timofei Pechorin

Vera and Tim are successful young professionals living fast-paced lives in ultra-modern Moscow. Their lives crackle with the capitalist energy of excess, anxiety, consumption, and stress- and they are in love.

Everything changes one night when Tim accidentally drives his car into Uloomji, a young Kalmyk day worker. (The Kalmyks are a semi-nomadic people of Mongolian decent.) The two men begin a torrid affair that involves howling and knocking over a lot of furniture. Tim is attracted to Uloomji's exotic demeanor and liberated by his impulsiveness and lack of inhibition. To Uloomji, Tim embodies a kind of class and refinement he sees only in magazines. Vera struggles to comprehend their bond and her boyfriend's erratic behavior. She is dragged reluctantly into a bizarre love triangle. Before long, all three lives unravel, exemplified by a visit to a Buddhist healer, a three-way in the bathroom of a gay bar, a faked death and a kidnapping.

Reviews
......This film, mostly shown outside Russia in gay film festivals, is not mainly a gay film, but rather a statement on diversity in Russia today. Having said that, it is also very stereotypically Russian in its length, cinematography, and in relying on subtleties to tell the truth. The exception to this is sex and nudity. These are not subtle, not very explicit either, but enough to say to the audience "look, how modern we are" while "hotter" issues (homosexuality, inequality between racial groups, economic and political crisis) are self censored.

Still, this is a step forward in free expression for Russian cinema. They still have to masquerade homosexuality as bisexuality (though foreign executives, corrupt politicians, and young hustlers can be gay - this shows where Russian society, at its most liberal level, accepts sexual diversity). It's OK as long as the "normal people" in society aren't gay - bisexual at most. Likewise, the huge socio economic gap existing between "ethnic Russians" and the eastern, more Asian looking ones, is glossed over with cute prejudice and cultural clichés.


We see a very stylized "Sex and the City" -like Moscow: one where, for the most part, people live in luxury apartments, drive expensive cars, and are sexually liberal, even between races and sexes, and threesomes. But hey, it's a movie. Enjoy!...........

Co-directors Olga Stolpovskaja's and Dmitry Troitsky's first feature lifts off the screen with a wonderful sense of fun, style and cheekiness that lets its first half slip by in a heady instant. But from the moment the storyline shifts to family matters from sexual roles the tension and pizzazz, like a dysfunctional Christmas dinner, slips into the night, never to be rekindled.

Stolpovskaja, who also wrote the script, must accept the blame and the glory, but should also be hard at work on her next project—here is a talent to watch.

Present-day Moscow is the setting for this film that examines money and materialism, mores and relationships as seen through the eyes of its principal characters. Vera (Lubov Tolkalina) is an ambitious and beautiful news anchor who manages to lose her pocketbook and gain a lover when advertising creative-genius Tim (Evgenij Korijakowskij) comes to her rescue and picks up more than her bill.


Soon the pair are an item, sharing steamy sex and copious amounts of food—particularly Granny Smith apples, which, in a clever homage to Adam and Eve, are munched after orgasm and also found woven subliminally into the bedspread. From the tight cut-a-ways that pepper their growing romance, the back-story of the serpent-Kalmyk-beauty Uloomji (Damir Badmaev)-brings him from the relative safety of his job as an animal keeper at the zoo to downtown Moscow where he quite literally falls into the 'hood (Tim's car) and soon uses his simple charm to snare Tim's affection.

In a charming scene, the two men, only in their underwear, sit together on the floor and tentatively touch each other's knees: Uloomji recalls the memory of his "one-summer" friend, Tim prepares to sample some forbidden fruit, then Vera stumbles on them and is aghast and shaken. How can she compete with a man?

The next scenes are magical as Uloomji, aided by a discarded GQ magazine does an urban makeover, wins Vera's acceptance and, in the sexual highlight of the film, wrestles with Tim, wrecking the apartment (Tchaikovsky bust goes akimbo, but no matter, bits of his Nutcracker Suite are the soundtrack for Tim's cell-phone ringer) before ending up, still more or less dressed, in the bathtub, where noses are licked and nipples explored.

Happiness is Cola!

Enter Uloomji's Uncle Wanja (Victor Sevidov, unconvincing-especially when holding a shotgun). Outraged that his nephew is gay (but only for fear of how that might reflect poorly on him), Wanja, now returned with the deer lover's parents, decides Uloomji must leave, but not before Vera—in the comedic highlight—recounts her previous life as a man and encourages the uncomfortable guardians to spring for Uloomji's operation.

The remainder of the film wanders uncertainly to a sex club where the Pierre et Giles costumed hustler does both Vera and Tim in the can while the naïve Uloomji inadvertently overhears their grunts on his cell phone. Then, in the most contrived sequence I've seen in years, Tim and Uloomji—happy at last—are tricked out of their honeymoon and separated again-this time, in saccharin symmetry, Uloomji's "one-winter" romance closes with the same driving-away-from-his-beloved shot.

There is much to admire: Richardas Norvila's soundscape and pop-song selections are superb; Sergej Plusenko and Oleg Raevskij's editing is crisp and forward-looking and Aleksandr Simonov's camera angles, focus and frame techniques keep the eye happily engaged. As Vera, Tolkalina brings the right touch of sophisticated angst to her part, while Tim makes a compelling convert but less successful "clubber." Badmaev steals the show with his dreamy, near-innocent face and upper torso that could bring anyone over for a least a visit. Sadly, only the female is allowed to bare all putting the ménage out of balance in the one area where there must be equality if the partners are to survive.