Dis­cov­er a clas­sic, booze-fuelled sequence of female self discovery

Lau­ra (Sei­di Haar­la) is an aspir­ing intel­lec­tu­al from Fin­land who is ​‘lodg­ing’ at her girlfriend’s (Iri­na, a pre­ten­tious aca­d­e­m­ic) place in Moscow. She’s there to sharp­en her lan­guage skills and try her best to fit into a bohemi­an intel­li­gentsia crowd of hip­pie aca­d­e­mics, a crowd she’s clear­ly not cut out for. She soon sets out for Mur­man­sk, the largest city north of the Arc­tic Cir­cle, to look at mil­lenia-old, recent­ly-dis­cov­ered pet­ro­glyphs. Despite the trip being Irina’s idea, she non­cha­lant­ly backs out of accom­pa­ny­ing her. So Lau­ra goes solo, and the clos­er she gets to Mur­man­sk, the more their rela­tion­ship dwindles.

Laura’s replace­ment bunk­mate Lho­ja (Yuriy Borisov) has a vod­ka bot­tle firm­ly grasped in hand, and seems to be your stereo­typ­i­cal­ly vir­ile, work­ing class brute, whose kind­ness and fragili­ty are con­cealed under his Sovi­et-style man­hood. He’s en route to Mur­man­sk to seek out a poten­tial min­ing job, and his crude demeanour couldn’t be more dif­fer­ent to Laura’s poised comportment.

Kuosmanen’s spa­tial aware­ness in his use of loca­tion very clev­er­ly mir­rors the rela­tion­ship between the two. The train’s ongo­ing move­ment, as well as its stops and detours, sig­nal that age-old road movie trope – the messy jour­ney to self-dis­cov­ery. Trains are (more often than not) uncom­fort­able, claus­tro­pho­bic spaces and Kuosmanen’s cam­era is tight­ly squeezed to the cramped con­fines of car­riages and nar­row cor­ri­dors. The widescreen aspect ratio makes the expanse seem vast and nev­er-end­ing. Such sev­er­al-day long jour­neys sus­pend their pas­sen­gers in a tran­sient non-place, where time seems to dis­ap­pear as they rush through cities, vil­lages, inter­est­ing land­scapes and drab terrain.

It’s when the train makes an overnight stop in Petroza­vod­sk that the pic­ture begins to breathe more slow­ly and freely. Ljo­ha won’t give up try­ing to win Lau­ra over, and urges her to join him as he hot-wires a car to vis­it an elder­ly woman who appears to be his adop­tive moth­er. ​“You’ll like her, you like old stuff and she’s real­ly old … You’re so fuck­ing bor­ing! She’s got vod­ka! And an old Russ­ian stove! And a cat!”, he insists. She final­ly gives in, not because she wants to, but to return a favour as he pro­tects her from a men­ac­ing man who tries to oust her from the out­door phone booth as she impa­tient­ly waits for Iri­na on the oth­er end of the line (spoil­er: she nev­er picks up).

As soon as the nar­row train con­fines are swapped for the expanse of the coun­try­side, the rela­tion­ship dynam­ics begin to shift, and that’s thanks to none oth­er than that great equalis­er: alco­hol. Ljo­ha picks up some bot­tles along the way to the woman’s cab­in, which is enveloped in a com­fort­able warmth. Shot mag­nif­i­cent­ly on two-per­fo­ra­tion 35mm, the cam­era moves ever-so-flu­id­ly through the cosy inte­ri­ors, while the use of light and tones of warmth amid snowy Russ­ian land­scapes are a wel­come breath of fresh air.

Lau­ra spends the evening drink­ing copi­ous amounts of moon­shine with the woman, long after Ljo­ha goes to bed. The old­er woman imparts her sim­ple words of wis­dom while doing shots of moon­shine: Do what your inner self tells you. And so she does. Albeit under­stat­ed, Kuosmanen’s cam­er­a­work always sug­gests that there’s much more than meets the eye, depict­ing infat­u­a­tion with a real­ism that’s ten­der and charm­ing, per­fect­ly cap­tur­ing that fleet­ing yet intox­i­cat­ing feel­ing of hav­ing a crush.

Ljoha’s facial expres­sions slow­ly begin to reveal that his brood­ing exte­ri­or and machis­mo are prod­ucts of hav­ing rarely expe­ri­enced human kind­ness. The vague­ly tran­scen­den­tal qual­i­ty of alco­hol in this sequence not only sub­verts the dynam­ics between the ten­ta­tive pair, whose rela­tion­ship begins to devel­op depth and dimen­sion; it also illus­trates the mis­lead­ing nature of snap judge­ments, of rush­ing to eval­u­ate whether some­one is safe or dan­ger­ous, like­able or not.

Com­part­ment No. 6 is released by Cur­zon and opens in UK cin­e­mas & exclu­sive­ly on Cur­zon Home Cin­e­ma on Fri­day 8^th April. For more infor­ma­tion on screen­ings and venues, head to Cur​zon​.com.