Kino Reticulator » Andrei Myagkov

Alisa Freindlich

Reticulator — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 06:22:43 +0000

I got brave enough to edit my first-ever Wikipedia page tonight. It came about because of the actress on the left in the screenshot below.

This time it wasn’t a voice that gave her away, as in the case of Andrei Myagkov (3rd from the left). It was the way of holding her jaw, with mouth slightly open — facial mannerisms that made her seem like a tough hombre. After wondering about it a couple of days, I finally recalled where I had seen her before.

It was in another Eldar Ryazanov film with a similar name — an earlier one: Office Romance. And Myagkov was in that one, too.

Her name is Alisa Freindlich. Her Wikipedia page didn’t list A Cruel Romance in the filmography section, so I added it.

Unfortunately, there is no Wikipedia page for the movie itself, and I wasn’t ambitious enough to start one. One step at a time.

Their voices give them away

Reticulator — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 04:47:00 +0000

Andrei Myagkov’s voice gives him away the moment he opens his mouth in this movie. I recognized him not by the way he looks, but by the way he talks. Same for Nikita Mikhalkov, though in his case I was expecting his appearance from what I read in the YouTube description. It wouldn’t have mattered. His voice gives him away.

It reminds me of how remarkable it was that Aleksandr Belyavsky could put on a such a different voice to play Leonid Brezhnev in Serye Volki.

Irony of fate, the sequel

Reticulator — Mon, 12 May 2008 03:49:53 +0000

Tonight we watched the rest of Irony of Fate, the Sequel. It was better than we had expected — not bad for a sequel. It was fun to see all the actors again, 30 years older than in the original. Andrei Myagkov and Yuri Yaklovev have aged nicely. Barbara Brylska looks great, but surely has had some top-notch help from plastic surgeons to look that good in her mid 60s. It would have been nice to see Liya Akhedzhakova, too. She is the only character, other than the two mothers, who I found missing in the sequel.

The original from 1975, besides being a goofy comedy and a love story, was a satire on the uniformity of the Brezhnev era. This one is in part a satire on the cell phone culture.

If there is any doubt that this is a post-Soviet movie, the militsia (police) are portrayed as sleepy, good-natured drunks (it’s New Year’s Eve, after all) who are easily deceived and bribed. I wonder how long Putin will allow that before movies have to go back to portraying them as in the Soviet days.

The younger generation of actors did fine work, I thought. Sergei Bezrukov as Irakliy was great. I’d like to see what other kinds of characters he can play. I was rooting for a reformed Irakliy who learns to get his priorities straight would to get the girl in the end (and kiss her without interruptions from that cell phone attached to his head) but it was not to be. Konstantin Khabensky, who plays Zhenya’s son, does fine as a drunken Russian, but drunken Russians are a dime a dozen in movies. Liza Boyarskaya as Nadya, Jr. doesn’t have a lot to do besides look pretty — compared to what Barbara Brylska did in the original — but she showed some signs of being a capable actress anyway.