(Three Stories)
Russia-based director Kira Muratova, who won a Silver Bear in 1990 for The Asthenic Syndrome and whose film Small Passions was presented in the Forum Section in 1994, is back in Berlin. The three episodes of her new film Three Stories are linked by the common motif of violent death. They are crime stories, though not of the whodunit variety. Crimes constitute the bulk of the plots, but the cases are neither solved nor the miscreants brought to justice.
Heating Basement No. 6 depicts the story of a man who kills his neighbour in a fit of rage. In his attempt to get rid of her body, he asks a poet friend who works as the stoker in the basement to assist him. Ofelia introduces us to Ofa, a nurse, whose mother gave her up for adoption at birth. The hard fate that has befallen her since moves her to seek revenge, and she quenches her thirst for blood by killing two women. Finally, in Death and the Maiden an old man is poisoned to death by his neighbour's young daughter.
Director Kira Muratova defines her contribution to the film as that of a legal counsellor: 'A director should never judge the characters - it's better to leave that to the audience. I simply want to show things as they are.' As a rule, protagonists deserve the sympathy of the director: 'The guy in the first episode commits a crime directly related to the circumstances he lives in. He is not a criminal, not a madman, which is also true of the girl in the third episode. A psychiatrist would diagnose them both as perfectly normal. Ofelia, of course, is different - serial killers are different, aren't they? But if you had to analyse the motives in those three cases, it could be done without too much trouble.'
Some nine episodes were originally planned for the project. Whether Muratova will continue to pursue the cycle or turn to a new project has yet to be decided. 'To me, art is not a game,' she says. 'I use it as a means to fathom my own inner depths. So I don't like to repeat myself.' Michael Nowak
Regie (Dir): Kira Muratova
Buch (Scr): Igor Boshko, Renata Litvinova, Vera Storosheva
Darsteller (Cast): Sergej Makoveckij, Renata Litvinova, Oleg Tabakov
Länge (Running time): 114 Minuten.
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