An unlikely, quite undefinable spark of feeling between Laura, an awkward Finnish student in love with culture, and Ljoha, a rough young Russian on his way to the Arctic mines, is coaxed to life aboard a train rattling towards the far Northwest in Juho Kuosmanen’s engrossingly offbeat rail movie Compartment No. 6 (Hytti nro 6). Fully modulated yet natural performances by the two leads, Seidi Haarla and Yuriy Borisov, walk us through the human condition with the nuances of a big Russian novel. They pushed this deceptively low-key sleeper into the winners’ circle at Cannes this year, where it brought home the Grand Prix.
The joy of the film lies largely in identifying with the misadventures of Laura, a college student making her first visit to Russia in what appears to be circa the late 1990s, judging by the age of her video camera and the absence of cell phones. We meet her at a sophisticated party in the Muscovite apartment of the laughing, self-assured Irina (Dinara Drukarova), whose cultured friends involve Laura in a game guessing the author of obscure quotations, then make fun of her answers and even her pronunciation of Russian, which she is struggling to learn. We’re on her side when she retreats to the bedroom, where we discover she’s not only Irina’s lodger, but her lover.
Further disappointment follows. Irina has withdrawn at the last minute from a romantic trip they were going to take together, a long and adventurous train ride to Murmansk where Laura, who has a passion for archeology, planned to view prehistoric rock paintings. These petroglyphs, which are located on an island in the middle of a lake that freezes over in winter, become the illusive goal that takes the girl on a sort of paradoxical quest leading to self-realizations and much more.
With Irina out of the picture (an urgent telephone call from a pay phone in St. Petersburg convinces Laura she’s already been replaced in her affections), there’s nothing to do but make the trip alone. Struggling onto the train and navigating a narrow corridor with her backpack and luggage, she reaches her compartment — only to find she’s sharing it with a filthy drunk who obnoxiously shouts invasive questions her way, like whether she’s come to Russia to sell her body. This is Ljoha, a travelling companion so offensive that she retreats to the dining car and when it closes, considers moving into crowded third class.
This comic introduction to the earthier side of Russia is the perfect counter-balance to the faux-friends and intellectual life of Moscow, which Laura has immortalized, indeed fetishized, on her vidcam. For a while she lightens the burden of the long, multi-day train ride hosting a Finnish hippie in their compartment. Ljoha responds by sulking and sleeping, while Laura smirks at how well she’s outwitted him. But it ends badly, with the loss of something very precious to Laura, and instead of having the last laugh he’s entitled to, Ljoha (now sober) understands and comforts her with unexpected empathy. Haarla and Borisov, who are divided by nationality, class and culture and who even physically appear unmatched, make the moment feel completely right.
Perhaps because both main characters have unexplored depths, they continue to surprise us. Laura is a free spirit and a rebel at heart, and Ljoha a wild man with very delicate feelings. When he drives her over snowy country roads in a stolen car to spend a night drinking with an old lady (a memorable cameo by Lidia Kostina) who acts like his mother, Laura is into it. But it is only when they arrive at their distant destination that he proves how big his heart is. What the future could hold for these two polar opposites is hard to imagine, but that only makes the ending more genuine.
It’s a very small cast but, like the storyline, the casting is witty and dry. Borisov shows yet another side of his seemingly endless faces after appearing this year in Natalya Kurdryashova’s Gerda in Locarno, Kirill Serebrennikov’s Petrov’s Flu also in Cannes competition, and Alexey Chupov and Natalya Merkulova’s Captain Volkonogov Escaped in Venice. Although Haarla hasn’t yet this kind of repertoire, her freshness and vulnerability prove to rhyme with the miner’s mournful good will.
The film is shot with most of Kuosmanen’s crew from his previous film, the unconventional boxing drama The Happiest Day in the Life of Ollli Maki which won the Certain Regard prize in 2016. Cinematographer Jani-Petteri Passi captures the ineffable beauty of light reflecting off a pristine snowfall in quiet colors that envelope the characters and the quaint Russian vintage sets designed with such telling detail by Kari Kankaanpää you can almost feel and smell them.
Director: Juho Kuosmanen
Screenwriters: Andris Felmanis, Livia Ulman, Juho Kuosmanen based on a novel by Rosa Liksom
Cast: Seidi Haarla, Yuriy Borisov, Dinara Drukarova, Yuliya Aug
Producers: Jussi Rantamaki, Emilia Haukka, Jamila Wenske, Melanie Blocksdorf
Cinematography: Jani-Petteri Passi
Production design: Kari Kankaanpää
Costume design: Jaanus Vahtra
Editing: Jussi Rautaniemi
Sound design: Pietu Korhonen
Production companies: Aamu Film Company Achtung Panda!
World sales: Totem Films
Venue: El Gouna Film Festival (Feature Narrative competition)
107 minutes
