The Student

A film set in a school in Russia. Venya will not go to a lesson. His mother is called in and the boy states his reason: the girls wear swimsuits in the swimming class and to him that is a sin. The school takes it for an excuse. Then Venya starts quoting scripture. He produces a passage for every argument. He recites from memory, gives chapter and verse, and nobody can answer him. From there the film is a story of escalation. He objects to evolution in biology, disrupts the sex education class, and puts pressure on the school's management. The management gives ground. The head wants no trouble and takes his side every time. One teacher resists. Elena teaches biology; she takes the argument seriously and begins reading the sources herself. There is Grisha as well. A boy with a damaged leg attaches himself to Venya and follows him. What the narrative is interested in is not faith but a vacuum: nobody argues with what Venya says, and the film is really about why the institution cannot stand against him. Elena's line is the axis. She is right and is left alone, and she is the one who is blamed. There is a scene near the end. Elena makes a move, and that move is the film's most memorable image. The form is theatrical. The scenes are shot in long single takes, the camera moves around the room, and there are very few cuts. The source is a play by Marius von Mayenburg; the director had staged the same text in the theatre first. The verses appear written on screen and the audience can check the source. The film was shown in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes and took a prize. Petr Skvortsov, Viktoriya Isakova, Yuliya Aug and Aleksandr Gorchilin are in the cast. Kirill Serebrennikov adapted and directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes films built on an argument of ideas and contemporary Russian cinema. Who it is not for: anyone looking for a sympathetic character; the central figure is disturbing throughout and the film never contradicts him, leaving that work to the audience.