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THE WEDDING

Свадьба

France, Russia

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Synopsis

Synopsis

Today is a big day for Mishka Krapivin. He's marrying Tania Simakova, his childhood sweetheart, unworried by the fact that she is returning home burdened with mysteries after a few years spent working as a model in Moscow.
As it happens, today is also the day when the citizens' wages arrive. Nobody has been paid for six months, but everybody has to wait their turn on the town square, knowing there isn't enough money to go round and all wanting to get in there first.

None of the Krapivin family welcomes the wedding. Mishka's father, a local hero smothered with Communist medals, anxiously watches the guest list grow, seeing every last kopeck of his long-awaited pension going to feed them. Meanwhile, Mishka's grandfather spreads baleful rumours about the "creature" joining the family and Mishka's mother sobs over her son's dismal fate.

Mishka has only one thing on his mind: buying his bride a wedding present, but his dad grabs all his money to pay for the feast. His workmates respond to this injustice by passing the hat to raise enough for Mishka to buy a present. To keep it from his father's clutches, he gives the money to his good old friend Garkusha for safe-keeping. Unfortunately Garkusha sees life through the bottom of a vodka bottle and promptly blows Mishka's roubles on a boozing spree.

Thanks to his sister's modest savings and the goodwill of the flower vendors at the market, Mishka is finally able to buy his bride a bouquet. He happily goes to her house to present it, only to find that he has a powerful rival for Tania's affections ...

Biography

Having studied at Moscow University (1965-71) and at Moscow Film School (1973-75), Pavel Lounguine wrote some ten film scripts before he started to direct.

Filmography:
1990 TAXI BLUES
1991 GOULAG, SECRET OF HAPPINESS, doc.
1992 LUNA PARK
1993 NICE, THE LITTLE RUSSIA, doc.
1994 THE ESKIMOS, UNNECESSARY PEOPLE, doc.
1996 LIFELINE
1998 VLADIMIR MAYAKOVSKI, doc.
1998 LA BOTTINE, short

Today is a big day for Mishka Krapivin. He's marrying Tania Simakova, his childhood sweetheart, unworried by the fact that she is returning home burdened with mysteries after a few years spent working as a model in Moscow.
As it happens, today is also the day when the citizens' wages arrive. Nobody has been paid for six months, but everybody has to wait their turn on the town square, knowing there isn't enough money to go round and all wanting to get in there first.

None of the Krapivin family welcomes the wedding. Mishka's father, a local hero smothered with Communist medals, anxiously watches the guest list grow, seeing every last kopeck of his long-awaited pension going to feed them. Meanwhile, Mishka's grandfather spreads baleful rumours about the "creature" joining the family and Mishka's mother sobs over her son's dismal fate.

Mishka has only one thing on his mind: buying his bride a wedding present, but his dad grabs all his money to pay for the feast. His workmates respond to this injustice by passing the hat to raise enough for Mishka to buy a present. To keep it from his father's clutches, he gives the money to his good old friend Garkusha for safe-keeping. Unfortunately Garkusha sees life through the bottom of a vodka bottle and promptly blows Mishka's roubles on a boozing spree.

Thanks to his sister's modest savings and the goodwill of the flower vendors at the market, Mishka is finally able to buy his bride a bouquet. He happily goes to her house to present it, only to find that he has a powerful rival for Tania's affections ...

Nominations

  • European Cinematographer 2000

Selections

  • Feature Film Selection 2000

Cast & Crew

The Wedding
The Wedding
The Wedding
The Wedding

Director's Statement

THE WEDDING was prompted by a set of questions that torment me, to which I have no answers.
How is the Russian people surviving in the year 2000 ?

I'm not talking about the rampant afflictions of war, gangsterism and corruption, but about everyday life. What has become of the family? Love? Childhood? Friendship?

What remains of the old certainties, the old values? Have people changed?

Can they change?

Through a range of situations, some comic, some tragic, I set out to paint the group portrait of a small Russian mining town two hundred kilometres from Moscow. Here in Lipski, time seems to have stood still. The era of Socialism has ended but the new life has yet to begin.

The leading actors are backed by a supporting cast of the town's real inhabitants, each one an emblem of all those who have been abandoned by their government, artists and the outside world, the millions of Russians lost in the abyss of their country.

The film's central character, Mishka, is a plain honest boy, a touch "idiotic" in the Dostoevsky sense, for whom the idea of self-sacrifice, of giving one's all, is as natural as life itself.

There is a Russian proverb that says "Without one just man, a village cannot exist." In a way, this adage is the clue to the movie. As long as. Russia can still count on the strength and goodness of people like Mishka, immune to the "rust" of society, this country will always have its lifeblood

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