Sezon tumanov

I started with much trepidation as some Russian films are a bit thin on the ground with dialogue and the plot/screenplay itself. However, the film itself is very enjoyable and unlike many films these days is a bit more in depth with both the character's roles within the film and the way the film plays out the plot.

The English village and surrounding countryside has been well selected from a locational viewpoint and is populated by some village residents that bring a smile to your face with their bantering between each other. The village idiot who is clearly barking mad is also quite amusing in his own small way. I highly recommend this film.

I was one of the fortunate people who was invited to the screening of this film in Cambridge a few months ago. Without the temptation to refer to the plot, I would summarise this work as a refreshing and insightful piece that realistically portrays an educated middle-aged Russian woman trying to find herself in a foreign culture whilst having very limited opportunities. It particularly struck a chord with me because it somewhat reminded me of a story I witnessed in my own family: the emotional turmoil that my mother faced having moved to the UK from Russia where she was in a respected and successful academic post, but subsequently had to make do with some low-profile job opportunities that stunted her personal and professional growth. Marina's soul is aching for fulfilment beyond the mundane tasks of an every day life in a small village. You can almost 'feel' her emotional emptiness and you sense her being out of place, her desire to fly out of a cage that her life seems to have become since moving to the UK. Is this what most highly-educated creative Russian women endure when they relocate to a foreign country? I really liked the character of Marina's husband, mostly for the loyalty and kindness despite quite profound life-changing events that unravel.

The movie skilfully conveys a huge range of emotions. There is a place for tears and there is a place for a smile. What is certain is that it left me with a deep feeling of HOPE.

Hollywood and art house: the two basic forms of contemporary cinema. One of them tends towards being entertainment and escapist-oriented; the other delights in exploring the vagaries and trials of real life. It takes an artist to make 'real life' entertaining, especially if the film in question is dealing with flat and grey matters like the everyday disappointment of expectations. Two recent British films seem to me however to have hit the authentically Chekhovian note: one of them Joanna Hogg's 'Archipelago', the other being the film under review, an Anglo-Russian production directed by Anna Tchernakova.

Marina, the heroine of 'Season of Mists', is, like the director herself, an expatriated Russian living in the West, and one of the questions the film asks rather subtly is whether it is possible to have a fulfilled life in a country that isn't one's own. (The same question, as a matter of fact, that Tarkovsky was asking in 'Nostalghia'.) Language comes into the matter, but also the genius of the locality. Tchernakova makes a good job of showing how rural south Leicestershire is the most ordinary place on earth - yes, even downright boring - but at the same time magical and wonderful, and imbued with misty poetic grace.

So, why wouldn't you want to live there - especially if you were happily married? That's the question. True love tends to cut through every dilemma, but, although living companionably enough with her garage-mechanic Welsh husband Gregory (a nice performance by Ifan Huw Dafydd), one pretty soon gets the feeling he doesn't come near to fulfilling Marina's highest and deepest ideals. Thus, when along comes a party of Russian musicians - quarrelsome, talkative and fond of the bottle - of course she falls for one of them: it is inevitable. Since this is a film rather than a piece of theatre (or indeed a television play) we can actually go to Moscow with Marina, and take another look around at her birth place. What a lot of life there is in the city, compared to sweet little middle-class England! But is it the right kind of life? And what does one mean by 'a lot of life' anyway? The temptations inherent in the situation are nicely and evenly drawn by Tchernakova. We watch with fascination our heroine trying to make up her mind at the onset of a ferocious mid-life crisis (it makes it more piquant that a child or, rather, children, are involved). Should she obey the promptings of desire (such promptings may after all be merely temporary), or settle for what she has - knowing, or fearing, that in doing so she is opting for second best? Such is the dilemma the movie hinges upon, with some freshly-observed secondary characters, just to make the situation complicated and interesting. Whatever happens, it is not going to be a conventional happy ending. But are we left therefore with an inevitably 'tragic' ending? This is how the film seems to me to be very clever. Often, in life, we simply don't know what our blessings are - or whether indeed blessings come into the matter.Is the colour of life grey, or is it silver? Or both at the same time? Are we - in this film - in spring or in autumn? And what would Chekhov have made of Marina?

This is a well crafted and beautifully photographed film, made on a low budget and none the worse for that. It is an interesting, modern story about the dilemmas of a Russian woman, Marina, who is married to an English car mechanic. They live in a village in rural Leicestershire where he runs the garage, she works as a hairdresser and their daughter (not his biological child) goes to the local school. This is the setting for the ensuing plot which explores issues to do with family, love, expectation and loyalty, constraining gender roles and cultural dislocation - all contributing to a mid-life crisis for Marina. She is torn between the narrowness of her present life in rural England and the opportunities now offered in her home city of Moscow - possibilities which presumably had not been available before she left that life behind. The unexpected arrival in her local town of some musicians from Moscow is the catalyst for change, but with, perhaps, an unexpected denouement.

Most of the characters, including Marina's clients in the hairdresser, are well observed with convincing and endearing detail, and the film team – the director, Anna Tchernakova, the actors and the photographers - succeed in making the thought-provoking and intimate narrative come alive. Tchernakova also uses the landscape to convey thoughts and emotions. The camera work enables us to experience the dichotomy between the scenic, rural world of this quiet English village and the exciting buzz of the modern Russian capital. The long vistas of the railway line and viaduct are a metaphor for Marina's actual and emotional journey. The standing stone on the hillside conveys the rooted, connective power which some people intuit from ancient sites in the countryside, and has an important role in the tale. It is just a shame the stone was clearly not a real one! This film is worth going to see, and offers a glimpse of the difficulties many women face in similar circumstances. I'm uncomfortable with the solution to the story but that in itself is not a problem – it's a subject for discussion!

A modern setting, a contemporary tale, yet with a charm that is in many ways reminiscent of a bygone age.

With a welcome lack of gratuitous explosions and sfx, and a screenplay that is both perceptive and thought provoking, this is the story of an intelligent Russian woman who finds something lacking in life with her English husband.

Her dream life in the West has fallen far short of her expectations, and she has had plenty of time to reflect on this. In England she is perceived as a hairdresser, far removed from the writers' circles which she used to frequent in Moscow, where her talent was understood and recognised.

Location filming in the English countryside and Russian metropolis adds to the contrast between two very different cultures and expectations.

In the tradition of films such as Truly Madly Deeply and Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont, this is an absolute gem.