Getting home late last night,I decided to check the online WOW Film Festival line-up. Finding this title to have a swift runtime, I got ready to listen at 18 kilohertz.
Note: Review features some plot details.
View on the film:
Not shy in opening stating the inspiration as Born Slippery by Underworld blasts out across the dance floor, writer/ director Farkhat Sharipov & cinematographer Aleksandr Plotnikov unroll a dead eye to the world atmosphere, via cramped camera moves in dingy, (intentionally) poorly lit corridors and bedrooms where, in unflinching detail, Sharipov captures in close-ups all the characters getting drugged up.
Entering the Kazakhstan newly free from the Soviets almost as fast as the drug boom, Sharipov splatters the walls of the characters with signs of Western music entering the nation, with the camera panning over posters and drawings of The Doors, Nirvana and Guns N' Roses.
Lit up from Zara Yesenaman's novel Hardcore, the adaptation by Sharipov aims for a tale of marginalized youth, but sadly misses the target, by making each of the characters interchangeable druggies, with little distinguishing characteristics being allowed to shine, before they again get drugged out whilst listening at 18 kilohertz.
