It's certainly no surprise that the best apology Timofei can manage for the heartbroken Vera involves repeating lines from a bad television soap opera.

| Original Score: 2/4 | May 6, 2005

The fault lies in an anemic script and misguided attempts by co-directors Olga Stolpovskaya and Dmitry Troitsky to seem hip by using lots of quick cuts.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Apr 1, 2005

The film comes off as little more than a shock-value exercise.

| Original Score: C | Mar 24, 2005

To say the epilogue strains credibility is a kindness. The filmmakers seem set on a happy ending, no matter what the story itself is telling them.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Mar 10, 2005

Though the progress of this ill-matched love triangle is fun to follow in its self-consciously wacky way, the movie's chief pleasures, at least to a Western eye, are anthropological.

Full Review | Feb 14, 2005

A clumsily drawn, poorly acted love triangle.

Full Review | Feb 14, 2005

Wavers between would-be satire and romantic drama, inhabiting neither mode convincingly.

Full Review | Feb 14, 2005

The film starts as an entertaining postmodern take on bedroom farce but quickly becomes the kind of sprawling, unpredictable and sexually charged tale associated with Pedro Almodvar, but without the storytelling discipline.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Feb 11, 2005

Suggests that Russia is such a progressive society these days that homophobia can be treated in jaunty fashion as a joke, something that's harmless and transitory. This strains credibility.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Feb 10, 2005

Tepid Russian comedy.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Nov 20, 2004

Stolpovskaya uses jump cuts, flashy graphics and cool techno music to paint a delightful portrait of a post-Communist Russia overdosing on capitalism.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 19, 2004

Gay themes aside, it provides a revealing look at Russian society that U.S. audiences seldom see.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Nov 19, 2004

It is official. Russia is now modern enough to deal with a romantic theme that Noël Coward tackled in 1933.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 18, 2004

The film is most buoyant when most over-the-top.

| Nov 16, 2004

As a filmmaker, Stolpovskaya is a natural.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 30, 2004