Convenience Store fits into the category of films that believe voyeuristically showing a perpetuating cycle of sadism is the best way of drawing attention to social ills and injustice. For some viewers this may indeed be the case, and Michael Borodin’s feature debut certainly succeeds in conjuring a nightmare world of oppression where kindness, or even decency, is an exception. Other spectators well-aware of mankind’s inhumanity may however question whether the best way of calling attention to the plight of enslaved Central Asian workers in Russia is by compounding cruelty and hopelessness in a story overburdened with plot and absent of relief. More a film for festival programmers than their audiences, Convenience Store can be marketed as a hard-hitting, based-on-fact exposé but its punishing nature will likely exhaust more than rally righteous indignation.
Borodin starts well with a glowingly warm close-up in the backroom of a convenience store where an intimate marriage ceremony enfolds between Mukhabbat (Zukhara Sanzysbay) and Bekzod (Tolibzhon Suleimanov). As the camera pans out we initially interpret Mukhabbat’s inert face as virginal timidity, but then when she’s made to go back to work in the shop it becomes clear that her impassivity comes from a combination of sheer exhaustion and subjugation. Like the other female workers in this 24-hour store on Moscow’s outskirts, she’s enslaved to owner Zhanna (Lyudmila Vasilyeva), a bottle-blonde witch who lures women from Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan with the promise of wages and the pretense of being like a second mother, but then confiscates their passports and makes them chattel with the collusion of the local police.
Mukhabbat is pregnant, presumably having been raped by Zhanna’s henchman Bekzod. Under the ugly light of the store’s dingy bulbs, the women work in a kind of trance, terrified of the next beating. When newcomer Mavlyuda (Asel Tyutyubaeva) is raped by the cops in Zhanna’s pay, she escapes but is captured and brought back to the shop where Bekzod hammers a nail into her foot after everyone is scolded for being “ungrateful scumbags.”
A significant flaw in Convenience Store is the passage of time, which lurches forward in fits and starts. Mukhabbat delivers a son, Bairam, but sometime shortly after Bekzod hands the kid over to Zhanna, who presumably sells him. It’s a step too far for the enslaved woman who’s finally roused from her torpor, and she seeks help from Svetlana (Lyubov Korolkova), a local resident who’s one of the only characters to show any compassion (though unnecessarily stamping her as New Age-y makes her slightly kooky rather than simply kind). Unsurprisingly bureaucracy from both Russian and Uzbek authorities complicate matters and Mukhabbat is lucky just to get back to eastern Uzbekistan, where she finds her mother (Zukhra Ashurova) but little means of financial support. She has one goal: to get her son back.
The film’s basic premise comes from a similar case of enslavement in Moscow’s Golyanovo district, which also inspired the director’s short Registration. The facts are horrendous and justice has not been served, but it remains questionable whether the cause itself is served by Borodin’s method of presenting life as an unrelenting struggle in which hope is either nonexistent or attainable only by becoming an oppressor. His script is overladen with plot, like a 19th century novel in which the protagonist is metaphorically (and physically) beaten down at every exhaustive turn, and a final surprise shot, while beautifully handled, acts as another slap precisely because its attempt at offering a potential sense of escape feels so dishonest.
Most of Convenience Store is composed of darkened, lurid interiors with no visible windows or natural light sources, which fits the goal of presenting a world without escape. Once Mukhabbat arrives in Uzbekistan however, there’s blue sky and a sense of being able to breathe, but that too is a feint: sunny skies may temporarily warm the body, but without the means to earn a living and care for your family, it’s just another cruel taunt.
Director: Michael Borodin
Screenplay: Michael Borodin
Cast: Zukhara Sanzysbay, Lyudmila Vasilyeva, Tolibzhon Suleimanov, Asel Tyutyubaeva, Zukhra Ashurova, Kamilla Mukhlisova, Nargiz Abdullaeva, Daniyar Artykbaev, Lyubov Korolkova
Producer: Artem Vasilyev
Co-producers: Aleš Pavlin, Andrej Štritof, Diloy Gülün
Cinematography: Ekaterina Smolina
Production design: Vladislav Ogay
Costume design: Olga Chelyapova, Timur Katkov
Editing: Alexandra Putsyato
Music: Aleksey Polyakov
Sound: Igor Gladkiy
Production companies: Metrafilms (Russian Federation), Perfo Productions (Slovenia), Karma Production (Turkey), with the participation of Einbahnstraße Productions.
Venue: Berlinale (Panorama)
In Russian, Uzbek
106 minutes
