Elena By Andrei Zvyagintsev

Opening shots slowly explore cold and empty yet luxurious apartment. We meet Elena (Nadezhda Markina) housekeeping her wealthy husband’s house. Vladimir met Elena ten years ago, while she was working as his nurse in a hospital. Both were lonely widowers with their grown-up children, and they ended up with marriage. Despite their relationship includes some warm and sincere feelings, Elena doesn’t feels “at home” neither with Vladimir, nor his money and social class. This colossal gap between poor and rich is represented through the long and hallucinating trip from the fancy city center to a shabby districts where Elena’s unemployed son, together with his family of two children, are barely surviving. However it is a place where Elena looks fully alive and enjoys being able to ease their living, although she is well aware that the reason why she’s is welcomed here is her husband’s money.

Elena is almost a Don Quixotic hero believing that money can solve her sun’s failures, but once in her lifetime she will have to make crucial decision and forget peaceful humility. Elena’s solitude is depicted through blueish and greyish cinematography and patient camera slowly pacing without any sympathies, nor imputation. Over-sentient sounds, recording every movement in the shot, combined with Phillip Glass’ music score, makes this story tangible and involving with no way to distance from it.

Zvyaginstev’s Elena is a dark social drama. It is as dark as it is close to real life. Even the purest person has his/hers vices and this film makes it more comprehensible and even defensible. It doesn’t answer but rather rise the questions of how and what/whom for to live. As director’s previous films, Elena examines family relations and society’s norms. It straightly asks weather its possible to buy one’s life in a world of odds.

By Aistė Račaitytė