We meet Laura (Seidi Haarla) as she wanders among — but not part of — the people gathered at a party hosted by her somewhat older lover, Irina (Dinara Drukarova); they treat Laura with mildly mocking disdain, as if she’s the hired help attempting to rise above her station.
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| Laura (Seidi Haarla) and Ljoha (Yuriy Borisov) — separated by nationality, schooling, refinement and just about every other possible human quality — seem unlikely to get along, when forced to share a cramped train compartment. |
Even so, the two have planned a trip together. Laura, a Finnish student studying archaeology at Moscow University — Irina probably is one of her professors — is eager to see the Kanozero petroglyphs. This will involve a train ride to distant Murmansk: a 35-hour trip that’ll cover roughly 925 miles.
But Irina backs out at the last moment. (Possibly as a means of severing the relationship? Kuosmanen doesn’t bother with such details.) Obviously stung but still determined, Laura boards the train by herself.
She winds up sharing a two-person sleeper compartment with Ljoha (Yuriy Borisov), a loutish Russian who assumes that she’s a sex worker, and makes appropriately vulgar remarks to that effect. She’s more repulsed than frightened; he doesn’t exactly radiate menace, but he seems the worst sort of guy with whom to share such a confined space. Sadly, efforts to switch compartments prove fruitless.
When she returns to their compartment, Ljoha has passed out in an alcoholic stupor.
The time is unspecified, although it feels like the mid- to late 1990s, shortly after the breakup of the Soviet Union (an event that fits this story’s evolving moral center). Laura listens to music on a Walkman, and takes photos — and narrates her impression of things — with a hand-held camcorder.
By daylight Ljoha is less threatening, if still vulgar; they trade superficial details, and he explains that he’s traveling to work at a massive mine near the Arctic Circle. He’s amused by her “scholarly ways”; she regards him with mild contempt, having decided that his limited education puts him beneath her (little realizing that she’s now treating him the way Irina’s friends treated her).
You’d expect such a film to be claustrophobic and confined, but that isn’t the case; Kuosmanen finds plenty of ways to “open up” the narrative. Other passengers briefly sit in their compartment as the trip proceeds; Laura and Ljoha encounter numerous other people during the train’s many station stops, some of them lengthy. These interactions further shape their evolving dynamic.
He seems able to make friends with anybody, which impresses her.
She repeatedly calls Irina, with limited satisfaction.
Even though Kuosmanen’s film has felt rather aimless, we eventually realize that we’re completely hooked, and utterly transfixed by the delicacy of this evolving relationship: not exactly a friendship, and unlikely to become romantic, but definitely mutual acceptance.
And, most crucially, respect. Prickly posturing turns gentle, almost affectionate.
It doesn’t come quickly, and both must move beyond their knee-jerk assumptions; Ljoha bristles, early on, when he believes she thinks him a thief … at which point she realizes that he’s another human soul with feelings. It comes as a revelation; she’s genuinely surprised. She finds his crude efforts as an amateur artist oddly endearing.
He, in turn, eventually sees that her patronizing air of calm confidence is a pose: a means of covering the fact that she’s a vulnerable, frequently worried young woman alone in a massive, often harsh country that she doesn’t understand, and which she’s doing her best to navigate. His protective instincts kick in.
Kuosmanen extracts marvelously subtle performances from both actors. Haarla’s initial handling of Laura — a deer in the headlights, at Irina’s party — fades as this lengthy trip slowly builds her self-confidence. When she’s finally comfortable enough to smile, it’s a revelation: a flower blossoming before our eyes. She becomes cheerful, convivial, even coquettish: a fully fleshed woman, and a far better human being than her former lover.
Once we get past the initial concern that Ljoha might be a sexual predator, Borisov’s performance becomes quite funny; Ljoha is such a Cro-Magnon — relentlessly profane, slovenly and crude — that he becomes endearing. More to the point, his developing admiration, however gruff — and his gallant (if awkwardly clumsy) willingness to help her — are quite touching.
This story’s third act is incredibly sweet and deeply moving.
Cinematographer Jani-Petteri Passi captures the harsh beauty of the vast and unforgiving countryside seen from the compartment window, and during station stops. (Goodness; could anything be more brutal than a Russian winter?) And it’s uncanny how the initially grubby, sloppy and cramped confines of production designer Kari Kankaanpää’s train compartment begins to look warm and cozy, as its occupants mutually thaw.
This is one case where the journey truly is more important than the destination … although the latter also is consequential.
This film couldn’t be better timed, given how divisive this country — and many parts of the world — have become. Given the horrific current events, it’s also an important reminder that Russia’s “regular folks” are no different than those anywhere else in the world.
Kuosmanen’s message is simple: Be willing to look past superficial assumptions about “The Other” — whether defined by race, religion, country or political ideology — and the results can be amazing.
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