MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Come to Life’: Hope in a Grim Setting

Vitaly Kanevski’s “Freeze-Die-Come to Life” (at the Monica 4-Plex) is as distinctive at its title, which comes from a game Kanevski played as a child in Eastern Russia, where his thoroughly captivating film is set. It’s to a small mining town in this frozen, remote locale, that Kanevski takes the viewer--a town that was a POW labor camp near the end of World War II, and a town that struggled through a period of drastic food shortages and a brutally indifferent and inefficient bureaucracy.

If this setting sounds grim, the film itself is exhilarating--even in the face of hardship, poverty and tragic loss. “Freeze-Die-Come to Life” has the unmistakable no-holds-barred, full-speed-ahead exuberance of a film that is unmistakably autobiographical and also a first feature.

Because of his outspoken nature, critical of the Soviet system, Kanevski, a veteran production assisant, had to wait until he was past 50 to make his directorial debut. But he possesses still a young man’s energy, passion and daring. His perseverance has been rewarded with a Camera d’Or at Cannes last year and reviews that have aptly compared his picture with Truffaut’s “The 400 Blows.”

Like Truffaut, Kanevski has an amazing rapport with children. From the adolescent Pavel Nazarov as his alter ego Valerka and from the equally youthful Dinara Drukarova as his girlfriend Galiya, Kanevski has inspired the most glowing, spontaneous, unself-conscious portrayals one could imagine. We meet Valerka and Galiya as they compete for customers for their hot tea at the local black market.

We are immediately thrust into a hearty, rough-and-tumble world in which warm, volatile people speak their minds, laugh loudly and easily. When a neighbor in the tenement where Valerka lives with his mother (Yelena Popova), who has had many lovers, suggests that she be the prize should he beat her son at chess, the woman is amused rather than offended.

Only when Valerka’s irrepressible prankishness takes a serious turn do we begin to feel the full impact of his--and everyone else’s--constant struggle merely to survive amid these conditions. (Kanevski has said that when he returned to his native region he found little had changed.)

Kanevski and cameraman Vladimir Brylyakov have given “Freeze-Die-Come to Life” what he calls the look of “dirty marble” --”Like marble steps that have been walked on in the snow. Soiled but beautiful.” That describes the film’s gritty yet beguiling appearance perfectly.

As a film memoir and chronicle of daily life, “Freeze-Die-Come to Life” (Times-rated Mature for complexity of style and adult themes) unfolds with no exposition and develops into a narrative only when Valerka finds himself on the run. This approach demands close attention but expresses Kanevski’s view of life as essentially mysterious and absurd in its random destructiveness and cruelty. Whenever we watch some activity--some school drill, for example--that strikes us as pointless, we suspect that its participants feel exactly the same way.

By the time this entirely remarkable film comes to an end, Kanevski has escalated hardship to a point of shocking loss and pain, yet never for a second does he falter in his defiant affirmation of life.

‘Freeze-Die-Come to Life’

Pavel Nazarov: Valerka

Dinara Drukarova: Galiya

Yelena Popova: Valerka’s Mother

Vyacheslav Bambushek: Vitya

An International Film Exchange Ltd. release of Lenfilm Studios production. Director Vitaly Kanevski. Producer Kanevski, Valentna Tarasova. Screenplay by Kanevski. Cinematographer Vladimir Brylyakov. Editor Galina Kornilova. Costumes Tatyana Kochergina, Natalya Milliant. Music Sergei Banevich. Art director Yuri Pashigorev. In Russian, with English subtitles.

Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes.

Times-rated Mature (for complex style, adult themes).