Female agency in Svetlana Proskurina’s Remote Access (2004) and Vera Storozheva’s Travelling with Pets (2007)

Abstract

The new millennium has granted long-awaited visibility and recognition to Russian women filmmakers, whose powerful presence in today’s cinema can hardly be overlooked. While examining women’s filmmaking as a phenomenon in post-Soviet culture, this article is particularly interested in the notion of female subjectivity as constructed by women directors. Two films that constitute the core of my analysis – Remote Access by Svetlana Proskurina (2004) and Travelling with Pets by Vera Storozheva (2007) – not only capture the changes occurring in modern society, but also spotlight an awakening of female agency as a crucial moment in women’s existence. Set in post-Soviet Russia, both films privilege a female protagonist, depict her unconventional demeanour as an independent woman and suggest a feminist reading of her actions. While Proskurina focuses on the complexities of the mother–daughter relations that culminate in their reunion (however tragic the circumstances are), Storozheva shows her heroine’s search for a fulfilled life outside marriage. Despite disparities in their narrative structures and cinematic styles, the directors allow their protagonists a liberating trajectory of self-realization as mothers (in men’s absence). My reading of both films is based on a thorough examination of the visual (and aural) structure of their cinematic canvases.

Notes

1. Analogous processes occurred in other spheres of post-Soviet cultural life. For instance, Russian journalism went through a somewhat similar development. Elena Vartanova has singled out three major tendencies in journalism and mass media of that period: digitalization, commercialization and feminization. In her words, ‘journalism has acquired a women’s face’ (Vartanova et al., 2007, 22).

2. For instance, in his monograph Rasskazy o kinematografe staroi Moskvy, Vladimir Mikhailov devotes a chapter to Antonina Khanzhonkova, the wife of one of the most famous and successful producers in early Russian cinema. The author states that not only did she work as Aleksandr Khanzhonkov’s administrative aide and his co-writer on several films, but she also directed Heart’s Mistake (Oshibka serdtsa, 1915) and Fiery Devil (Ognennyi D'iavol, 1916). Absent from the basic chronicles of early cinema, such as Nikolai Lebedev’s Ocherki istorii kino SSSR (1947) and 20 rezhisserskikh biografii (Chernenko 1971), she was finally given credit for her contribution as a director thanks to Mikhailov’s book (1998, 132–141).

3. Yet their oeuvres remain unknown to foreign moviegoers and film scholars around the world. Recent publications on women’s cinema hardly address this lamentable lacuna. For instance, while a recent volume on women’s cinema by Patricia White (2015) disappointingly omits any mention of Russian female filmmakers, Sight and Sound grants only three positions to the Russian/Soviet cine-creatrices in its 20-page list, ‘100 Overlooked Films Directed by Women’ (Anon 2015, 24–25), namely: The Enchanted Desna by Iuliia Solntseva (Zacharovannaia Desna, 1964), Wings by Larisa Shepit'ko (Kryl'ia, 1966) and Short Encounters by Kira Muratova (Korotkie vstrechi, 1967).

4. In their analysis of the 2007 festival in Sochi, Elena Stishova and Kirill Razlogov mention the ‘female expansion’ of the competition. While Stishova’s question of whether their films reflect the women’s point of view remains up in the air, her male colleague’s streamlined response suggests that it is latent in their works, even if in defiance of their will. At the same time, the lack of gender analysis in Russia, in Stishova’s view, results in their existence as ‘unread noumena’ (Stishova and Razlogov 2007, 26–27).

5. Before her, only Dziga Vertov, in his masterpiece Man with a Movie Camera (Chelovek s kino-apparatom, 1929), dared to capture a precise moment of a baby’s triumphant appearance from his mother’s womb.

6. Curiously, their lack of initiative in untangling this situation is linked to a concept of the Soviet intelligentsia as simultaneously decent and impotent, as earlier depicted in Georgii Daneliia’s Autumn Marathon (Osennii marafon, 1979).

7. Importantly, Liubakova portrays the men as abusive enemies and relegates them to the narrative’s background.

8. In harmony with my approach taken in Makoveeva 2007, I analyse their works in an attempt ‘to localize the female perspective, to distinguish it from the male point of view’ (249), and to lay bare shifts in the long-honoured paradigm of female subjectivity as constructed by Russo-Soviet filmmakers.

9. Not to mention Western feminist film critics’ perennial favourite, Maureen Gorris’s A Question of Silence (1982).

10. Kira Muratova, whose works are constantly at the epicentre of film scholars’ attention, resorts to sound as a potent cinematic device to construct additional meanings in her visual narratives, even if with a dissimilar goal. For instance, in her film Asthenic Syndrome (Astenicheskii sindrom, 1989), to discredit the politics of hearing and listening in the USSR, Muratova creates heteroglossia that ‘receives a literal implementation in the spoken word, which is acutely and irreparably out of tune, alienated from itself and polytonal in a freakish, morbid and perversely pleasurable way’ (Sandomirskaia 2014, 63).

11. David Bordwell suggests that the art-cinema’s love for ambiguous endings stems from its respect for life with ‘causes dangling and questions unanswered’ (Bordwell 1987, 210).

12. In her introduction to Cinepaternity, Helena Goscilo argues that Lacan’s scenario describes the father’s role as that of a helper for ‘the child’s induction into the Symbolic’ (Goscilo and Hashamova 2010, 4–5).

13. A comparison of the cinematic images surrounding Sergei’s parents produces a curious opposition between the mother associated with water and death as a return to the Imaginary, and the father linked to fire and death as expulsion from the Symbolic. Not accidentally, the only conversation between Sergei and his father occurs against the stove fire. While fire is introduced in a negative context (car explosion, a verbal fight with the father, being lost in the woods), the sight of water seems to comfort the young man.

14. For instance, in her films An Occasional Waltz and Reflection in a Mirror (Otrazhenie v zerkale, 1992) Proskurina exploits music’s capacity to shock and jar the spectator. Here, the musical score by Viacheslav Gaivoronskii subdues the visual and verbal signifiers through non-synchronization and a preponderance of dissonant sounds.

15. In her review of Remote Access, Birgit Beumers (2005) points out the actors’ special intonations that intend ‘to destroy the narrative impulse and lay bare the metaphysical quality of the word, its pure meaning’ – a method developed by the well-known Russian theatre director, Anatolii Vasil'ev.

16. Kaja Silverman (1998, 72–100) contrasts two interpretations of the maternal voice as a sonorous envelope (Guy Rosolato) and as an entrapping vocal continuum (Michel Chion).

17. Feminist directors have frequently experimented with asynchronized sound, to separate the female body from its voice, thus challenging the Hollywood convention that permits use of the disembodied voice only for the reaffirmation of male subjectivity. Proskurina’s goal, however, is different.

18. Curiously, at some point in the narrative all characters study their reflections in a mirror, as if (not) identifying themselves with their estranged selves.

19. Even if pertinent to my specific approach to the films made by the Russian women directors, this reading hardly exhausts all possible interpretations of Proskurina’s multilayered narrative. For instance, Kirill Razlogov (2005) in his analysis foregrounds the film’s structural basis that rests on three mythological systems: those of communication, alienation and new Russians.

20. Even though the film received the Best Film Award at the Moscow International Film Festival in 2007, its reception by film critics was far from unanimously positive. As is apparent from a discussion published in Seans (2008), some of them felt dissatisfied with the film’s (visual and verbal) unconsummated essence that elicited a sense of overall ‘falsity’ in its viewers.

21. As brilliantly argued by Iurii Lotman and Boris Uspenskii (1985, 30–66), the constant alteration of meanings encapsulated in such structurally relevant concepts as ‘new’ and ‘old’ characterizes the development of Russian culture.

22. Vanechka (2007), a melodrama by Elena Nikolaeva, epitomizes today’s tendency to capitalize on the notion of the ‘full-fledged’ family (spiced with strong religious connotations) as a panacea for social malaise.

23. The suggestiveness of Natal'ia’s name is unveiled early in the film. As soon as the priest officiating at the funeral service learns her name, he interprets it as ‘natural’.

24. In a comedic manner, this scenario was hilariously played out by Nona Mordiukova as the industrious widow of a trackman in El'dar Riazanov’s Station for Two (Vokzal dlia dvoikh, 1982).

25. The verbal register of Storozheva’s narrative likewise lends itself to a feminist reading. Although favouring images over voices, the film recreates a convincing (auditory) picture of the woman ‘acquiring a voice’. At the decisive moment when the character realizes an essential similarity between her husband and her lover, she adopts the ‘I’ construction for the first time. Until then, her scarce speech rests on grammatically subjectless phrases without the first person pronoun. (Unfortunately, English subtitles fail to reproduce this linguistically meaningful effect).

26. In a sinister way, the death of her husband fulfils the function of a princely kiss.

27. Conversely, Uliianiia’s husband is portrayed as a man who is considerate of her spiritual needs and therefore accepts her decision to devote her life to God, as she has fulfilled her duties as wife and mother.

28. In an interview, Storozheva points out that the action of her film occurs ‘outside the time and space, and outside the social problems and frames’ (Belostotskii 2007).

29. In an interview, Lukichev (2007, 31) reveals his understanding of camerawork not as an impartial registering tool, but rather as a means of cinematic investigation palpable in the final product.

30. Not accidentally, one of the film’s reviewers, Elena Monastireva-Ansdell (2008), places Storozheva’s work among the films that depict individuals’ search for a higher meaning, though with a central role attributed to the female character in ‘the male-dominated quest for the meaning in contemporary Russian cinema’.

31. Previously perceived as an image foreign to the Russian consciousness, an armed female avenger has inhabited the Russian silver screen ensuing the dissipation of Soviet ideology. However, filmmakers’ continual reliance on inveterate notions and archetypes retards her transformation into a full-fledged avenger who metes out punishment on her own behalf as an individual rather than her country’s saviour. For more on the figure of the female avenger, see Makoveeva (2010).

32. In a somewhat similar vein, Liubakova interrupts one of her female character’s (Zoia’s) transformation into a mobile and active woman when she starts deviating from the path prescribed to a Russian woman.

33. In doing so, they already ‘smash what remains of crumbling Soviet-era ceilings and project their visions worldwide’ – the outcome that Karlanna Lewis (2014, 317) envisions only as a future mission of Russian women filmmakers.