L'autostop - Elegia russa

Hitch-hiking (Russian Elegy)
by Nikita Mikhalkov Fiction Italia 1990 52'

A self-assured and lone former racing car driver, having crossed all Europe on a brand new FIAT Tempra, arrives to Russia. He picks up a pregnant hitch-hiker who has lost her bus, but he is chased by her husband, a biker who has just won a prize for his driving skill. The woman will give birth before getting to the hospital in a chilling night in the midst of woods, helped by the two men and by the Tempra flexibility, a perfect "car for preg- nant women".
Mikhalkov well knows how to act in a made-to-order movie putting the programmed didacticism inside a drama pattern fully consistent with his own poetics foundations: the relationship between man and "Mother Russia" wide spaces.
The journey of Tempra turns into a descend toward the repressed content of the main character's life; gradually, while the kilometres are rising, the space-time coordinates change into emotional involvement. At the same time the suspense, coming from the "emergency state" where the two Mikhalkov's heroes are forced to act (facing up a delivery amidst the snowy steppe), is worked out with images of great figurative intensity.

Director:

Nikita Mikhalkov

Country:

Italia

Car

Film submission

26° Festival

CINEMAMBIENTE

05 June - 11 June 2023
TORINO

Competition registration

 

CINEMAMBIENTE

 
JUNIOR

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