Cinenews

February 24, 2014, New York, N.Y

Tragicomedy à la Lviv

 

A new Ukrainian family about to rebel.

2013's Credenza (Kredens) is director Valentyn Vasianovych's second feature film in as many years. This stands in stark contrast to the recent Ukrainian trend of dragging out film production by making directors wait years to receive their funds. Previously Vasianovych had worked primarily as a documentarian (Counterclockwise, Dusk), but last fall saw the debut of his Business as Usual (Zvychaina sprava), notably one of the rare full-length all-Ukrainian movies made since independence, and a comedy no less! Thanks perhaps to some twist of fate, he managed to avoid the snags and delays in financing that plagued his previous project, and completed this film in a short three years. The script was co-written with Iya Myslytska in just 2 months.


Credenza, which is set in the western Ukrainian city of L'viv in the wintertime, tells the story of Orest, a talented cellist with the L'viv Philharmonic who, while not disappointed in his life—quite the opposite actually—runs into one snafu after another. At work, though he is clearly the defter musician, the director passes him over and selects his rival to play with the orchestra in Vienna. This is no doubt a blow to his professional life (further complicated when the dispute turns into a tussle across the stage and later a police report), but it pales in comparison to the complete dysfunction of his wife's family and his mother-in-law's deranged plan to set things right.


It is initially rather difficult to sort out just who's with whom, who's married, lovers, or related. This is, in part, screenwriter oversight, but is also attributable to the fact that Credenza features a love triangle extraordinaire, a ménage à trois, à quatre that puts all other threesomes to shame. As it turns out, Orest is married to Natalka; his brother, Vadym, is married to Olenka, who happens to be Natalka's sister. So two brothers married two sisters, simple enough except Vadym is still in love with his old flame, Natalka, and the girls' mother thinks it would be best for everyone if Orest could be convinced to sleep with his wife's sister.


The family, who speaks Russian at home, has converted its frustrations with the state of independent Ukraine into amnesic sentimentality for the power and threat of the Soviet Union. The fact that they live in L'viv serves to underline the incongruity of their feelings; as a rule, western Ukrainians remember Soviet communism as a time of totalitarianism and occupation. The family's perceived descent from the heights of consummate Soviet bureaucracy is symbolized by its most prized possession: an unwieldy, antique cupboard, which their grandfather looted from Germany as the Red Army returned victoriously to Stalin's empire. (The word "kredens," though, comes to Ukrainian via an older empire, the Austro-Hungarian, which left its linguistic and cultural mark on the region and people. Thus Vasianovych and Myslytska draw a subtle contrast between those for whom this German relic might symbolize a yearning for the USSR, and those in whom it could evoke nostalgia for the Habsburg Dynasty. Needless to say, contemporary Ukrainian identity is a bit tangly.)


The cupboard's gothic stylings are cloying and overstated, dripping with the remains of empire. Just like communism, it belongs to a bygone era, it is overvalued by those who used to enjoy it, and modern Ukrainians can't see why anyone would still want it. Natalka's parents try to pawn off the credenza on her—it's her "inheritance"—and she and Orest have no choice but to welcome it into their apartment, or needlessly upset her mother's delicate balance. Predictably, the cumbersome piece disrupts the pleasantness of their domestic life in a way they cannot get used to. Olenka and Vadym have yet a less tolerable home life. Still living in the family apartment, they walk about perpetually on edge, unable to get even a moment's respite from their overbearing parents.


Orest is clearly the most levelheaded of all the relatives. A couple incidents at his son's music school demonstrate the quality of his character and his commitment to justice even when it's not convenient. His equanimity and honesty are threatened, however, by the quandary he's left in at work: whether or not he should compromise his values to get something he actually deserves. All the while, he is struggling with how to help his friend and cherished childhood music teacher whose school is under threat of closure by a local bully with cash. The unwelcome pressures start to wear on this good-hearted man and the audience, which experiences each subsequent calamity along with him; hence, his highly charged outburst at the end comes as catharsis to viewers, too.


 
Two female characters in a male-dominated society.

Anyone who has seen Vasianovych's first feature will recognize obvious similarities: both are films about urban, nearly middle-aged men who have grown frustrated with their routine lives. Both men are professionals; they both have marital problems; and, above all, both are afflicted by powerlessness to effect change in their lives. And in neither story is Vasianovych mindful of the problems, feelings, or thoughts of the women in their lives. Once again we're shown men forestalled in achieving their goals by unfortunate circumstances and insufficiently supportive partners. Vasianovych shows Natalka at work in her currency-exchange kiosk, but skips over the fact that this wholly unfulfilling job, in part, allows Orest to pursue music. Natalka's bizarre relationship with her mother and the constant pressure she's under could explain some of her behavior. Likewise her mother's own actions are probably the result of a lifetime of being cut off from activity in the public sphere and being able to exert herself only at home. Ultimately, when Orest delivers his coup de grâce, he is able to sit back calmly and enjoy an apple. What's left out, however, is that Natalka will be the one to clean up the pieces of broken dishes and conciliate her offended relatives. Who's to say that she ever wanted to go through the whole production in the first place? As likely as not, she feels constrained by the expectations her society imposes on women to preserve familial peace and maintain traditions. In Vasianovych's world, when Orest, or Vadym, or Tolik has a problem, he gets to act out; if, however, Natalka, Olenka, and Marta feel discontented or unfulfilled, they have to keep their heads down and keep things together.


So far, Vasianovych and Myslytska seem incapable of writing strong, independent female characters. The only two women in this movie with any kind of spunk are unscrupulous and unlikeable. The assistant director of the philharmonic is a professional woman in a position of power, authority she is shown exploiting for personal pleasure. Orest's mother-in-law is manipulative and cunning, irrational and temperamental. Aside from Orest, she has castrated her whole family through her capricious favor and the bitterness of her vengeance. The subtext here is rather obvious: good women don't get any ideas and they do as they're told. This reveals a rather crude understanding of feminism in which "feminists" are vipers whose response to patriarchy is to amass as much personal power as possible by any available means. Of course, this does not mean that Vasianovych and Myslytska won't ever write a part for an admirable, realistic woman. In fact, the way they seem to be getting financed lately, it looks like they will have plenty of opportunities to explore the entire breadth of the human experience through cinema, not just one half. L'viv is such a lovely city to view on film, and dysfunctional families such a mesmerizing topic that it's even conceivable they will show us Natalka's world, after all.


For all her unsavoriness—er, probably because of it—Orest's mother-in-law is side-splittingly funny. Neolina Biletska, known primarily as a stage actress with 56 years of theater experience, delivers an absolutely unparalleled performance as Natalka's meddlesome mother. Not only was the self-aggrandizing kibitzer given some of the best lines in the movie, but also most of the second-best are about her. She's a supporting character who doesn't even have a name in the film, yet despite everyone's best efforts to defy her, most of the activity revolves around her desires—just the way she wants it. Vasianovych's tragicomedy is also ripe with moments of bittersweet absurdity, like when the amateurish henchmen prove remarkably inept at destroying the music school. It's pathetically senseless and, at the same time, plain hilarious. It's what Ukrainians would call "laughter through tears."


Finally, this reviewer would like to add that it's a wonderful time in Ukrainian cinema when we can begin to evaluate films based on their merits as films and not as pawns in an asinine game of jockeying for the Ministry's benevolence. This movie certainly didn't get everything right—very few do—but at last a space is being opened for a discourse on art, and Credenza just might be the herald of a long awaited epoch.


Ali Kinsella,
Columbia University


Ukrainian Film Club of Columbia University© 2015. For more information please contact Yuri Shevchuk