La Rose noire, emblème de la tristesse, la rose rouge, emblème de l'amour

Continuing with previously given promises, I re-watched this one, too. Nowadays, it looks more "together" than "Assa". In the previous "perestroika gem," the trashy crime noir was wed with a restaurant band but here we have a Mexican soap opera married to soviet kitchen dissidents. Yet the film still looks like a daisy chain of visual gags, some of them tired even at the moment of the premiere. This time, almost no Spanish shame for participants, apart from Mr. Zbruyev (Alexandra's dad) who overdoes it big time. Two scenes are especially bad: the prolonged caterwauling with strained freaky fun, "The Ship of Freaks" playing in the background; and the breakthrough into the space of frigging high spirituality through a baptismal washtub and a Christmas window with colored lights. The writer-director clearly makes a significant face here yet his problem is that he has really nothing to say. Wise face is a false friend; when all post-Soviet filmmakers had nothing to balance the ugly reality with they used the Orthodox metaphor that looked as unnatural and stupid then as it does now (however now it is also revolting). Making fun of "perestroika" was tired and bad taste even in the late 1980s. But the soundtrack record was much better than the first time.