A Nest of Gentlefolk

The first thing you notice about Konchalovsky's film is the vulnerability of its characters. Based on one of Turgenev's stories, it's all there - the travels abroad to remote and seductive but unsatisfying foreign capitals, the continuing dialogue on the meaning of Russianness, the feeling of gentlemanly melancholy...and those women. A man, a gentleman (even if his mother was a servant), reopens his old estate, a servant girl bobbing ahead of him opening doors, drawing back curtains - an excuse for some superb camerawork. Shown sumptuous portraits of his father's family, he asks to see his mother's portrait. In a sense the rest of the film is an attempt to piece together the picture, first of one woman - the wife who left him - then another, and to paint himself into their world. Not a bad aim, and one that isn't given a falsely easy solution either.