Search - You I Love on DVD

"But it's only you I love"

M. J Leonard | Silver Lake, Los Angeles, CA United States | 07/21/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Admittedly You I Love is a stylistic mess, with its frenzied editing, jittery jump cuts, techno music, and weirdly out-of-place sonic experimentation; the film looks like some kind of cheap, untried music video. And the love scenes between the two leading men are so badly choreographed that it's almost laughable.

Consequently, it would be easy to dismiss You I Love is an irrelevance, a fledgling Russian film of little importance, that is, until after viewing the film, you watch the interviews with the writer, director, and actors. They firmly give the film cultural and social perspective and one quickly realizes that You I Love, for all its slightness and triviality, is really vital, fresh, and also terribly important. Russia is still a fairly conservative society and most Russians would probably cringe at the thought of homosexuality up on the big screen, so you have to admire a movie that addresses a taboo subject in frank and honest terms.

By making a vivacious comedy, a farce of Russian bisexual manners, they made the film "kind of gay," while also ensuring that the film will appeal to a wider audience. You I Love not only stands as the first gay Russian film ever made, but also holds the prize for the most widely seen Russian film outside Russia. Set in Moscow, it has moments of shimmering, modern hipness, where the central characters are quirky, attractive, high-end consumers, and where relationships and sexuality are perhaps as fluid as anywhere in the West.

Timofey, (Evgeny Koryakovsky) is a trendy advertising copywriter. He drives a shiny Audi, lives in a lovely apartment, and works on TV commercials that somehow manage to equate soft drinks with freedom. At an upscale café, he meets and falls for Vera, (Lubov Tolkalina). Vera is a stylish and beautiful TV news anchorwoman who has a bigger appetite for food than for sex. Timofey, however, seems deliriously happy, until Uloomji (Damir Badmaev), a young, and innocent drifter, literally falls on Timofey's car.

Uloomji is a Kalmyk and exotic looking, but he's also young and naïve. He lives at the zoo and is absolutely flummoxed by the concept of an ATM, but Timofey is soon taken with him and gradually becomes besotted with the sexy young transient. For Uloomji, Timofey represents the world of glamour he knows from magazine advertisements, and for Timofey, Uloomji represents youth, passion, and an indefinable lust for life. Uloomji eventually moves in, much to Vera's displeasure, and what follows is a strange and complex bedroom farce as the three embark on a journey of sexual and emotional exploration.

There are some terrific moments in You I Love. In one scene, Vera, dressed in sexy and provocative lingerie, pretends she's a transsexual in order to rid them of Uloomji's prying Uncle, and in another scene, when Timofey and Uloomji decide that they like each other, they sing songs and sort of cavort around in their underwear. Later, they play loud music, get frisky in the bathtub and somehow break the crystal chandelier. Vera is a bit conflicted by all this metro-sexuality; she desperately loves Timofey, but is she willing to play second fiddle to Uloomji?

Vera's confusion leads her to visit a spa-clinic for high-voltage body treatments and to follow Timofey to an underground gay club, where they enjoy a ménage à trois with a sexy young blond man in a bathroom stall (it's one of the funniest scenes in the film). I'm not sure what Vera's motivations are for doing this: maybe she wants to be more accepting of Timofey and Uloomji's lifestyle, or perhaps she just wants to explore her own sexuality. Meanwhile, Uloomji has his own problems to contend with - he has to come out to his traditionally minded parents, while fighting to be truthful to Timofey.

You I love has been compared to Pedro Almodóvar's films, but I couldn't see the comparison. Almodóvar's films are a product of Spain's new post-Franco social freedoms, whereas this film is a product of a bourgeoning and vibrant queer-themed Russian cinema movement. However, I do think the movie, thematically and stylistically, bears a resemblance to the films of American filmmaker Greg Araki. Even the final scene is a direct lift from Araki's 1999 film Splendor. Regardless of this, the filmmaking style remains exuberant and self-assured, and the combination of sex farce with biting Russian social commentary is always relevant and pertinent, and for the most part, well carried off. Mike Leonard July 05.
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