This is emotionally strong movie.Basically it's a monologue,a movie where there's only one actor- mother.Kirill Serebrennikov is an amazing director,he was able to show this sacred mystery of Russian suburb.While searching for her son the main actress somehow in this, abandoned by civilization place, finds her destiny and changes.Would be interesting to see what would happen to this people in years,would her son forgive her and come back?is he going to have family there in Yuriev? what would happen to her? All this questions are left after the movie is over.This is what makes it different and mystical the way the story is told.
4 Reviews
Minimum common denominator
juan_palmero201030 March 2021
Renowned Moscow opera diva Lyubov Pavlolvna is moving for good to Germany. Just before leaving, she goes on a nostalgic trip with her despondent son Andrey to her almost forgotten birthplace, Yurev, behaving and feeling like a tourist. While visiting the local kremlin, Andrey disappears. Lyubov starts a desperate and fruitless search for her son, after which she decides to stay in the town to wait for her son's return.
In just a few days, Lyubov suffers a painful transformation, eventually finding a common denominator with the locals, whose lives are so different to the glamorous life she has led in the capital.
The film shows the contrast between Lyubov's former world and some provincial Russia outside Moscow (and St. Petersburg and a few other major cities), where life is shown as cold, grim, poor, rude. But perhaps that "lower" life is also good enough, worth living for. And thus life leads Lyubov back to the starting point she had run away from many years earlier.
Not an easy film to watch, but one that I ultimately found rewarding. Despite a few questions about the logic behind certain elements.
Kseniya Rappoport's acting is outstanding, mesmerising. So much talent. She carries the film on her own.
In just a few days, Lyubov suffers a painful transformation, eventually finding a common denominator with the locals, whose lives are so different to the glamorous life she has led in the capital.
The film shows the contrast between Lyubov's former world and some provincial Russia outside Moscow (and St. Petersburg and a few other major cities), where life is shown as cold, grim, poor, rude. But perhaps that "lower" life is also good enough, worth living for. And thus life leads Lyubov back to the starting point she had run away from many years earlier.
Not an easy film to watch, but one that I ultimately found rewarding. Despite a few questions about the logic behind certain elements.
Kseniya Rappoport's acting is outstanding, mesmerising. So much talent. She carries the film on her own.
The Magic of Kseniya Rappoport
Zhorzhik-Morzhik8 March 2020
"Yuri's Day" is a spiritual drama by Kirill Serebrennikov. The magic of the film is not in the plot of the film, where almost nothing happens. The magic of the film is in the incomparable Kseniya Rappoport, which plays like herself. This is one of the few Russian actresses of our time who can boast of significant roles abroad, because Kseniya is one of the Italian movie stars too.
An abstraction (not realism), but brilliant and meaningful
q_aldis21 March 2020
Warning: Spoilers
This movie is highly abstract and in a way artificial but very impressive in its message. It shows how fragile what we see as our everyday reality is and that our surroundings might be worth not much more than an illusion, depicting a dramatic shift that the life of the main character takes in mere weeks. /SPOILER:/ She comes into a small, half-deserted village as a big-city star alien to its life and ends up a choir singer in a local church in a creepingly realistic transformation brought about by a mysterious disappearance of her son.
P.S. I don't think that knowing the plot makes any difference in watching the movie at all, hence this spoiler of a review. Saw it a long time ago and still revisit it in my thoughts, I think it's really masterful how that "completely another reality breathing over your shoulder" is shown. Whether there's any specific ethical, moral, cultural, political or other message in it would be a matter of debate.
P.S. I don't think that knowing the plot makes any difference in watching the movie at all, hence this spoiler of a review. Saw it a long time ago and still revisit it in my thoughts, I think it's really masterful how that "completely another reality breathing over your shoulder" is shown. Whether there's any specific ethical, moral, cultural, political or other message in it would be a matter of debate.
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