Metamorphosis

Gregor Samsa, a travelling salesman, wakes one morning transformed into a gigantic insect. He cannot leave his room, and his relation with his family changes at a stroke. The household is first astonished, then uncomfortable, then worn out. Gregor loses the ability to speak but goes on thinking. The film does not build the transformation as a spectacle; it puts the weight on the acting and the space. The account stands close to a theatre stage. The work is adapted from Kafka’s story of the same name. The eighty minutes pass almost entirely inside one house. Evgeny Mironov plays Gregor, with Igor Kvasha also in the cast, in Valery Fokin’s Russian film, completed in 2002.