In the current political context, it’s not exactly expected to find a piece of media that looks at Russia with endearment—vodka and all.
Finnish director, Juho Kuosmanen, made a valiant effort to do just that, with his 2022 film, Compartment No. 6. The film follows the journey of two strangers—Laura, an archaeology student from Finland, who is leaving a passionate yet imbalanced affair to see petroglyphs (played by Seidi Haarla), and Ljoha, a Russian miner and misogynist, brute, and all-round red flag (played by Yuriy Borisov)—from Moscow to the bitterly cold and bleak town of Murmansk. Compartment No. 6 is adapted from the novel by Finnish author Rosa Liksom, giving us a refreshing twist on the romantic-comedy-drama.
It follows the classic formula of a romantic comedy—but with less grand gestures and more spitting. Kuosmanen captures a reality that is hard to envisage as an ideal scenario for finding love. A filthy train without running water, where unwelcome visitors with crying children make themselves comfortable on your bed. But the portrayal of these two exceedingly lonely, isolated people finding solace in one another, while in uncomfortably close quarters, brings a depth to both the generally done to death enemies-to-lovers and travel-romance trope.
Liksom has definitely drawn from many travel-connection-romance films past, such as Before Sunrise and Lost in Translation, however she makes it entirely her own. Despite the similarity of meeting—on a train in a foreign place, with an awkward meet-cute—the disdain Laura feels for Ljoha in the beginning trumps any intellectualised romanticisms and extensive dialogue seen in Before Sunrise, and Kuosmanen’s directing style (see his 2016 film, The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki) removes any visually extraordinary elements that are seen and constantly reproduced in Lost in Translation. This film is no more than an unromantic love story set in a freezing, grungy shithole.
The cinematography is undeniably, yet masterfully, bleak. Despite the dreary, worn setting of the film—the interior of a long-distance Russian train, with small snippets of snow-covered stations and the home of one elderly Russian woman—there is a warmth emanating from the characters and their thawing relationship that brightens the surroundings.
The food looks like shit, the cigarettes are somehow less chic than has ever been seen in film, and the audience can practically taste that the paint stripper (aka Russian vodka), but by the end of their three-day journey together, there is no place they’d rather be. Compartment No. 6 is cinema stripped back, revealing how grim circumstances can lead to the most unpretentious form of human connection.
Now, don’t get me wrong—based on this description, it is apparent that this film does nothing for the representation of Russia. However, it may tell us that there are similarities between the drab situation there, and some of our own here (have you ever been on the V-Line to Waurn Ponds?)
Compartment No. 6 is only showing at Cinema Nova in Melbourne, so get some pasta and loll around Lygon St for a night.
The Warmest Winter: Compartment No. 6
Lucia Morris
(they/she)
