First-rate cast and good story, but a little off the realism mark
Layia Yourgour’s drama «Liubi,» which is currently playing in theaters, begins with the best intentions – a well-selected cast and an interesting storyline. The director narrates a contemporary drama centered on a young, female Russian migrant, hired by a Greek family to care for an elderly relative suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. «Liubi» in Russian means love, but the family that surrounds the heroine is the epitome of the Greek petit-bourgeoisie: ostentatiously wealthy, with money-grubbing men, hysterical women and relationships that are based mainly on what one party has to gain from the other. How can passion and love possibly blossom in such an environment? The romance that develops between the engaged son of the family and the charming Russian woman is doomed from the start. His ambitions do not have the space to flourish in such a restrictive relationship. While the end of the film could well have transcended the usual «happy ending,» it leaves behind one last trace of the reality on which Yourgour has structured the film. Naturalistic performances The director undermines her own narrative skills, leading the actors to naturalistic performances, going against the grain of the realism displayed in the visual parts of the film on the one hand, and selecting established and obvious resolutions to the given situation on the other. The putrid reality she wants to portray is exhausted by a first, prescribed reading. Evgenia Kaplan, who plays the title role, gives a charming performance.
