Yuri's Day

A film set in a Russian provincial town. Lyuba is an opera singer. She lives in Moscow and is about to move to Germany. She wants to do one thing before leaving. She will take her son to the town where she was born. The place is a small Russian town. The road is broken, the buildings old, and there is a monastery. Andrey is her son. He is nineteen and not happy about leaving. The two go round the town. She tells him about her childhood. Then they go to the monastery. Andrey disappears. From there the film is a search. Lyuba goes to the police. The police are not interested. A statement is taken, a file opened, and nothing done. Nobody in the town helps. Everyone is about their own business and nobody answers a question. Lyuba stays. She takes a room at a hotel. Then the hotel is too expensive. She finds work at a hospital. She starts as a cleaner. Her clothes change. Her speech changes. She cuts her hair. She works in a tuberculosis ward. Most of the patients are former convicts. She starts spending time with them. What the narrative is interested in is not a disappearance but dissolution: its idea is that in looking for her son she gives up her own identity, and that after a point the search itself becomes a pretext. The town is a force inside the narrative. It pulls people in and does not let them go. The last section takes place in a church. Lyuba joins the choir. She sings. But not with the voice she had at the opera. The narrative resolves nothing. The boy is not found and what happened is not said. The title refers to a date. The day in the Russian calendar when peasants could change masters once a year; the right was later abolished and the phrase came to mean a disappointment. The images are cold and grey. The narrative beautifies no scene. Kirill Serebrennikov directed. Kseniya Rappoport, Roman Shmakov and Yevgeniya Kuznetsova are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes Russian cinema and narratives that do not explain. Who it is not for: anyone expecting answers; the film closes no question and its tone is heavy throughout.