ELENA

Nadezhda Markina is sensational as ELENA

Andrey Zvyagintsev is a man who makes movie masterpieces.

After his breathtakingly beautiful THE RETURN, the movie maestro returns with ELENA (M), a film that revels in the minutiae of life and makes it riveting.

Spare, precise, with a stylish symmetry, this tale of tortured loyalties and familial ties begins with a series of domestic rituals – ablutions, breakfasts, toilets, dressings- the mundane made fascinating by a mantilla of intrigue.

Who is the woman, who rises from a bed in one room, to groom herself and prepare food for the man she awakens in another bed in another room?

She is Elena, he is Vladimir. She nursed him in hospital and he married her. Each has a child from a previous marriage. Her son, Sergey, is a lay-about with a lay-about son of his own and a wife who he keeps barefoot and pregnant. Vladimir’s daughter, Katerina is careless and contrary to her father, a wealthy businessman. Katerina is prickly towards Elena as Vladimir is prickly towards Sergey.

This creates prickles within the couple’s otherwise solid relationship, the nettles nudging piercing point when Vladimir suffers a health crisis, reunites with his daughter, and sets about drafting a new will. Nascent nettles bloom into a catastrophic cactus where maternal instinct conspire to spousal extinct.

Zvyagintsev hitches a ride on the Hitchcock highway where the MacGuffin hurtles into the heartland of moral disarray.

Nadezhda Markina is nothing short of sensational in the title role – the eternal maternal- gentle, sweet, feminine – driven by desperation in defence of her child, however misguided it may be.

It’s a heartbreaking performance of a person corrupted by moral malaise and serves not only as a virtuoso insight into human nature but as an allegory of modern society, ex Soviet or not.

ELENA may be set in Moscow but moviegoers from Mascot to Manly will identify with the machinations of manipulative offspring, breaches in blended families, and the balance between welfare and mollycoddling. Bludgers need bludgeoning before they infect their progeny and cause sins committed on their behalf. It seems some who sacrifice to succor are sacrificed themselves on the altar of selfish sons who take their mothers (and their wives) selflessness for granted.

From the mundane to murder, from grief to guilt, ELENA runs a gamut of detailed drama, thrilling and thoughtful, gorgeously framed and shot, and accompanied by a superb score by Philip Glass.

© Richard Cotter

20th June, 2012

Tags: Sydney Movie Reviews- ELENA, Sydney Movie Of The Week, Audrey Zvyagintsev, Nadezhda Markina, Philip Glass, THE RETURN, Sydney Arts Guide, Richard Cotter.