Yellow Cat (2020)

 

Director: Adilkhan Yerzhanov

Screenplay: Inna Smailova and Adilkhan Yerzhanov

Cast: Azamat Nigmanov as Kermek; Kamila Nugmanova as Eva; Sanjar Madi as Zhambas; Yerzhan Zhamankulov as Bozoy; Yerken Gubashev as Baldyr; Arslan Akubaev as Kubych

Ephemeral Waves

 

Buy the balloon. You have money.

In the middle of nowhere, in Kazakhstan's countryside, so silent there is not even non-diegetic music, Kermek (Azamat Nigmanov ) tries to get a job at a diner by the road. His only credentials for the work is being part of the construction battalion in the army, and being able to act out whole scenes from Le Samourai (1967), with the claim he looks like Alain Delon. Even when he becomes a security guard, he is also an ex-con whose cop relation challenges the choice on those grounds, forcing from his hands a safe life. In the middle of modern Kazakhstan, where there are phones, Wi-Fi and Bruce Lee t-shirts, this environment is still isolated to the point, as in any country, you would go strange from living within it long enough, and the cop is clearly crooked, working with a crime boss in this place and effectively forcing Kermek to join their goon squad in collecting money from people.

Yellow Cat, until more seriousness comes it as the plot goes on, is very deadpan, set in a multi-cultural world even in the middle of nowhere, of arguments that German tiles are superior to Czeck ones for house building, and the Le Samourai references, apparently shown on television in this world when Kermek grew up, which makes me personally glad I was finally able to see that Jean-Pierre Melville film when Criterion finally made it available in the United Kingdom at some point and be able to appreciate the references here. Whilst a lot of the humour is openly dead pan, Yellow Cat has these idiosyncratic cinema references as a French co-production. This does indeed, from director /co-writer Adilkhan Yerzhanov, feel like a pastiche of crime films from abroad, the plot line, and even that Kermek is very much a simplistic man in his own world, seen many times before. The story is timeless too however, able to be told in many different ways, which is why we retell these stories, especially here as for a film which ends bittersweet, Yellow Cat also embraces the absurd, as goons cannot stop a man with a shotgun and a trampoline he can leap on, as high as a storage container, able to keep them off for a short while.

The story told many times before is also that Kermek will find love with another lost soul, even if theirs will be a tragic one, in this case meeting Eva (Kamila Nugmanova), a young woman forced in sex work by a madam, but off in her own clouds, with vibrant red hair, blue dress and vibrant smile. She has also seen Le Samourai, if like Kermek snippets as neither may have seen the whole film. Truthfully, even if one of the henchmen on his side includes a man obsessed with Robert De Niro, quoting Casino (1995) and Taxi Driver (1976), Kermek really wants to build a movie theatre in the mountains like an amateur Fitzcarraldo (1982), with Eva an assistant when she is not travelling the world, a match made in heaven. Love, humanity and asking what Alain Delon would do, in the middle of trying to get money from someone who has not paid, leads to Kermek popping the cop in both hands, taking half of the money from the person they were meant to collect from, and fleeing.

This is a world where an evil crime boss appears on an electric scooter, in the middle of the countryside freeway, for a dispute, but Yellow Cat's narrative does becomes more tragic, as the cracks of a sadder reality intermingle with the humour and brightness, a brightness so clear between Kermek and Eva even non-diegetic music starts to appear in their lives. This is mind to a story, as it goes, we learn Eva was raped by her step father when a child, and forced into sex work, and that like many crime stories, stealing from the criminals to get a happy life does not usually end well at all. Even in this deadpan comedy, it is about people in the middle of nowhere, forced into these scenarios, trying to survive, and Adilkhan Yerzhanov manages with this to succeed, as it is clear Yerzhanov is referring to cinema's history as much in mind to them as a medium of escape which also reflect reality, both in films themselves and we viewing them as viewers. This is both in the references to crime films of the past, and in how the ending also includes an abrupt performance of content from Singing in the Rain (1952) in the middle of deserted landscape. I hope as much, when there is a scene of the leads buying a red balloon from a man trying to sell it for money, it is a reference to Albert Lamorisse's legendary 1956 short film The Red Balloon, considering the film references throughout.

The fleeting moments of playfulness, the cops accidentally shooting each other, or the robot monkey toy laid by two people dead/injured on the floor, eventually contrast the bleak reality of the situation, but contrasted by its vibrant colour, of the Kazakhstan landscape or details like the poster yellow car --- and Eva use for their fleeing, Yellow Cat manages to have a perfect balance which makes it work perfectly. Sadly, a film like this, among many world cinema productions, will be lost in the shuffle without greater attention, a shame as this, for a true compliment, feels like the type of films I saw from the 2000s era getting into world cinema. That era of films from Tartan Film and Artificial Eye, whose unpredictability and whose use of tropes as here led a sense of creativeness to cinema for the better, can be felt throughout Yellow Cat, and it comes with recommendation as a result for this.