Nothing Personal

Colour, 35 mm
Russia, 2007, 92 min
Section: A Female Take on Russia

Synopsis

Zimin is an experienced private detective. There’s nothing exciting about his work, and his marriage is pretty routine and lacklustre as well. He reliably does what is required of him. One day he receives the lucrative task of snooping on a woman, a commission he receives from a man who wishes to remain anonymous. His black-and-white monitor shows repetitive images of lonely evenings spent by an older woman who succumbs to hysterical fits of weeping – the images of someone else’s unhappiness. Yet the pharmacist Irina arouses his interest and compassion. Despite his mandatory discretion, he phones her up and records her reply. Encouraged by the woman’s positive response, he stylises himself in the role of suitor without realising that he is thus compensating for the emotional void of his own existence, and without appreciating the unethical nature of what he is doing. The attempt to change two lives is doomed to failure from the start… The director builds up her psychological drama by varying the scheme of the different stages of the relationship under scrutiny, and by constantly alternating the subjective and objective record of its development.

About the director

Larisa Sadilova (b. 1963, Bryansk) studied acting at the drama faculty of VGIK (1982) and, under the guidance of (and alongside) her teacher Sergei Gerasimov, she debuted as an actress in the film Lev Tolstoy (1984). More than twenty festival awards were presented to her directorial debut Happy Birthday! (S dnyom rozhdyeniya!, 1998), a paradocumentary look at the hectic world of a provincial maternity hospital. The film With Love. Lilly (S lyubovyu. Lilya, 2002) was equally successful, about the tragicomic flirtations of a poultry-farm worker (Tiger Award in Rotterdam, screened in Karlovy Vary in 2003). Two further films testify to the correlation between human expression and social circumstances in the Russian provinces, Babysitter Required (Trebuyetsya nyanya, 2005) and Nothing Personal (2007), which won the FIPRESCI Prize at the Moscow IFF. Her latest film Son (Synok, 2009), about a father’s unshakable love for his mischievous son, also plays out in a provincial town.