Who is Karakulov's D.P.? He/she is a brilliant lighter and has a magnificent understanding of how low light plays on film stocks. This film is just a stoner to look at.
The story is sort of early nineteenth century style passionate young love, passionate young death all ratcheted up to the level of Kabuki. Or maybe Verdi. For all that, the story and characters are just sketched in - an excuse for the most passionate, lush lighting and photography.
Story, what there is of it, follows the love affair between a young man and a young woman! New idea, eh?
She dies untimely, he goes into a major depression, ends up stabbing somebody (I think), and waiting for the police to carry him away. But the story doesn't matter. The shooter must have studied Vermeer and those other seventeenth century Dutch guys before he made this movie. He/she makes the whitewashed interiors of the peasant cottage that is the primary set into pure classic seventeenth century painting. It's just mesmerizing, single source of light light painting.
The film played at the San Francisco Film Festival in May, 1999 and, at that time, had not been subtitled in English. Which is good, because the film is all about classically beautiful pictures, and subtitles would only smudge up the frame.
