Zoology | Little White Lies

Zool­o­gy

28 Sep 2017 / Released: 29 Sep 2017

Young woman in black underwear standing in front of mirror in bedroom.
Young woman in black underwear standing in front of mirror in bedroom.
3

Anticipation.

Ivan I Tverdovskiy mixes fairy tale narratives with brash modern realities.

4

Enjoyment.

A courageous performance accompanied by a horribly realistic human tail.

4

In Retrospect.

Manages to tell the story of a woman growing a tail with memorable conviction.

A mid­dle-aged zoo work­er grows a tail in this bold and thought-pro­vok­ing Russ­ian drama.

After grow­ing a grotesque, fleshy tail, a lone­ly, mid­dle-aged zoo administrator’s jour­neys from obscu­ri­ty to infamy unfolds in the Russ­ian fable, Zool­o­gy. It would be easy to get lost in the tail end of the nar­ra­tive but there is much more sub­tle emo­tion to be found through­out. With a mod­est 91-minute run­time, the film’s thought-pro­vok­ing depth man­ages to sus­tain the light­ly bound plot. It deliv­ers a pierc­ing social com­men­tary on inner beau­ty over out­er van­i­ty through metaphors depict­ing pub­lic per­cep­tions of gen­der and sexuality.

There is a joy­ous and often-unortho­dox rela­tion­ship formed between cen­tral pro­tag­o­nist Natasha (Natalya Pavlenko­va) and her hand­some radi­ol­o­gist, Peter (Dmitriy Gro­shev). His kind­ness and non­cha­lant reac­tion to her tail draws her out of her bleak shell and, after a slight­ly drunk­en, bril­liant­ly com­posed sled­ding ses­sion, their com­pan­ion­ship is set. Russ­ian writer/​director Ivan I Tvre­dovskiy allows the restraint of his char­ac­ters to build up a sense of hair-trig­ger ten­sion until ani­mal­is­tic impuls­es take over.

Ongo­ing gos­sip among the towns­folk about this witch” with nefar­i­ous abil­i­ties is also manip­u­lat­ed bril­liant­ly, keep­ing the blend of fan­ta­sy and oppres­sive social views rel­e­vant­ly inter­twined with­in the nar­ra­tive. Natasha’s grad­ual accep­tance and even­tu­al fear-mon­ger­ing to cre­ate a sense of self-empow­er­ment com­mend­ably shows the extent of her growth through­out the film as well. Cred­it must be paid to Pavlenkova’s per­for­mance as the repressed recluse. She throws her­self into the role head on, leav­ing it all on screen.

It is no won­der the direc­tor brought the Russ­ian actress back after work­ing with her on his first fea­ture, the well-received 2014 film, Cor­rec­tions Class. Out of the blocks with two strong show­ings already, Tvredovskiy’s young career has shown great promise and has us eager­ly await­ing his future work.

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