MOVIE REVIEW : Soviet Society on the Brink in Sensational ‘Taxi’

The Moscow of Pavel Lounguine’s “Taxi Blues” (Friday at the Music Hall) is not one we’ve ever seen in quite this way. It’s not the dour, political chessboard of Western spy movies, or the staunch proletarian capital of old Soviet films.

Instead, this sensational new Soviet-French co-production gives us a volatile city, with something anarchic loose in the works. TV billboards tower over the streets, fireworks blaze, illicit booze flows. Fights erupt explosively, sex is rapacious. Cars careen madly over huge, nearly empty boulevards.

There’s a typical mournful Russian quality in “Taxi Blues”: a soulful melancholia that recalls Dostoevsky or Gorky. But the movie also resonates with something alien and wild, a rock ‘n’ roll backbeat jackhammering under long, sorrowing balalaika phrases.

Lounguine’s style is excessive, vital. So are his characters. “Taxi Blues” is a buddy-buddy picture, consciously modeled on early ‘70s American movies like “Scarecrow” and “The Last Detail.” And the two leads--skeletal, alcoholic jazzman Aleksei Lyosha (played by rock star Piotr Mamonov) and taciturn, muscular taxi driver Ivan Chlykov (Piotr Zaitchenko)--are polar opposites, perhaps drawn to each other precisely because of their extreme incompatibility.

Lyosha is supremely irresponsible: the artist as psychopath-child. Chlykov is stern, strong, tightly wrapped. The two meet when Lyosha, on a drunken spree, tries to run out on his cab fare, and Chlykov, infuriated, tracks him down and expropriates his saxophone. Before long, however, Chlykov is pulling Lyosha out of jail and taking him to his apartment--which Lyosha promptly wrecks in an orgy of hot baths and guzzling eau de cologne .

At first the bond between this Muscovite odd couple seems elusive. “I don’t do this because you’re cute,” Chlykov snarls, “I want my money!”

But he’s obviously wrong. It’s Lyosha’s liberated attitude he’s drawn to: the divine recklessness he thinks he has to tame and remold. In a way, the pair are dreamer-artist and realist-taskmaster, yoked together, and Lounguine obviously takes delight in reversing their roles: in having Lyosha steal Chlykov’s girl, Christina (Natalia Koliakanova), with a raunchy sax solo, in making Chlykov keep coming back for more.

The movie keeps mostly to Chlykov’s point of view, following Lyosha during scenes of redemption: as in his musical connection with a touring black American saxophonist (Hal Singer, playing himself). And, because we mostly see Lyosha as Chlykov sees him--an enigmatic, fascinatingly undisciplined genius-bum--the story avoids sentimentality.

Lounguine, like “Little Vera’s” Vassili Pitchul and other post- glasnost filmmakers, is trying to tear aside veils that years of Stalinist and post-Stalinist filmmaking have kept in place. But though, like Lyosha, he’s Jewish, Lounguine isn’t trying to make obvious points about bigotry--even though Chlykov is an anti-Semite. He’s after something different: a kind of universal anguish, a sense of things falling irrevocably apart, as if a reaction were taking place in these characters--and in Moscow--that was approaching critical mass.

The remorseless camera movements, tight compositions and harsh colors give “Taxi Blues” an overwhelmingly dark texture. It is a blues: simple, relentless, universal. There’s a sense of things teetering on the edge, ready to collapse. And there’s also a peculiar aura of the West as a great unconscious presence: spewing out many influences, including jazz.

America haunts the Moscow of “Taxi Blues.” Lounguine’s Muscovites fantasize about the U.S. until they’ve created a demonic parody of liberation and consumption. Looking at them is like staring into sunlight on a window. Squint hard and you see yourself.

‘Taxi Blues’

Piotr Mamonov: Aleksei Lyosha

Piotr Zaitchenko: Ivan Chlykov

Vladimir Kachpour: Old Netchiporenko

Natalia Koliakanova: Christina

An MK2 Productions USA release. Director/screenplay Pavel Lounguine. Producer Marin Karmitz. Executive producer Pierre Rival. Cinematographer Denis Evstigneev. Editor Elizabeth Guido. Costumes Natalia Dianova. Music Vladimir Chekassine. Set designer Valery Yourkevitch. With Hal Singer, Elena Safonova. Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes.

Times-rated: Mature (sex, language, violence).