It Doesn't Hurt Me (2006)

 

Director: Aleksey Balabanov

Screenplay: Valeri Mnatsakanov (with Aleksey Balabanov)

Cast: Renata Litvinova as Tata; Aleksandr Yatsenko as Misha; Dmitriy Dyuzhev as Oleg; Nikita Mikhalkov as Sergei Sergeyevich; Inga Strelkova-Oboldina as Alya; Valentin Kuznetsov as Vasya

Canon Fodder

 

A romantic film with comedy from Aleksey Balabanov...which is unexpected from the director of Brother (1997), the result of which being his least violent, his least nihilistic and ultimately most optimistic work from him, even if touched in melancholia in its narrative. Following two men, Misha (Aleksandr Yatsenko) and Sergei (Nikita Mikhalkov from Dead Man's Bluff (2005)), and their more carefree, more food fixated friend Alya (Inga Strelkova-Oboldina), they have gotten together to work on home renovations for well-off clients. That is if Misha is not seduced by Tata (Renata Litvinova), the female resident for the house they are currently working on.

In truth, It Doesn't Hurt Me is one of Balabanov's weakest films in terms of how conventional it is, but it finds redemption in how, yet, the humanity this unexpectedly offered is something that grows in greater weight when you see his filmography. For the most part happiness is not to be found in any other film for his world at all, so this stands out considerably among them, alongside the fact the film also improves greatly when it gets the second half and contrasts its tone with melancholia against people finding love and bonds the slither of hope. This touch of hope in his filmography is worthwhile, only with the issue from the get-go being how much of a conventional melodrama this is, becoming less a problem thankfully when the drama develops and expands.

The conventions at the beginning go as far as suggesting Misha, the seduced, has accidentally fallen in love with Tita's other, a mob boss named Sergei she is the younger mistress of, with the added surrealism that he is played by Nikita Mikhalkov, a filmmaker known in the West for the likes of Burnt by the Sun (1994). Even when the tone and style of the film is conventional throughout, the film for the better twists on this expectation fully, as the greater concern for the film is about Tita having blood cancer (leukemia), the director known for confrontational work trying to be emotionally sincere in a curious tangent in his career. The second half, when Sergei is brushed aside and he is no longer in the film, is when It Doesn't Hurt Me improves as the drama changes. It becomes a hopeful drama with an inevitable conclusion but a tenderness, a huge change for Aleksey Balabanov, more so as in 2007, Cargo 200, which is an adaptation of a William Faulkner novel, became one of his most controversial films, an extreme film in how nasty and nihilistic it was.

Even beforehand, one considers War (2002) and Dead Man's Bluff, and you see this as a vast contrast in terms of almost being a needed tonic in his filmography. There is a sense, when one is able to see Balabanov's filmography as designed rather than a couple of films, that if Cargo 200 is a uncomfortable last gasp of transgression, still feeling alien to the earlier crime films, than the bleaker films even beyond then like his Mikhail Bulgakov adaptation Morphine (2008) or The Stoker (2010) feel more retrospective in their tones. It Doesn't Hurt Me is tinged in sadness, with characters hiding alcoholism and a romance tinged in tragedy, but it is also a film about friendship, love and people sharing drinks and enjoying life, really making a wonderful change even if its conventional tone is definitely not "cool" like the crime films. Certainly, it is a film which improves, less for quality but for building its creator's personality in his art, when you can see it with the other films Aleksey Balabanov made.