Playing the Victim

Playing the Victim is, in the words of its makers, ‘an absurd black comedy about the facts of contemporary life, with a philosophical crescendo at the end of the film and with hidden quotations from Hamlet.’ Absurdism and humour are present throughout the film.
Having just graduated, Valya (Yuri Chursin) accepts a bizarre job to support himself. He has to visit different crime scenes and re-enact the crime in the presence of the suspects, and following their detailed account. All these actions are amateurishly recorded by Ljuda, a slightly naïve police officer (Anna Mikhalkova; see also the film Relations) who is under the command of the police captain (Vitaly Khaev). The crimes and the characters vary and are as absurd as everything around: from cutting a woman into pieces and trying to get rid of them in a chemical toilet to throwing a wife from a window, to shooting a colleague in a Japanese restaurant. Valya plays the role of victim until this strange job influences his own life in a peculiar way.
As with his film Bed Stories, Kirill Serebrennikov here shows excellent talent in observing human behaviour. He does this with a lot of wit and humour - even with a dash of slapstick - all formally wrapped in contemporary packaging. (LC)