OFFICIAL SELECTION – IN COMPETITION
We will never know exactly in which year the events recounted in Compartment n ° 6, only that at that time it took two good days and as many nights to reach Murmansk by train from Moscow. This is the trip that the Finnish filmmaker chose for his second feature film (he presented the first, Olli Mäki, at Un Certain Regard in 2016). He brings up Laura (Seidi Haarla), a young Finnish girl who has come to study in Moscow. She leads a bohemian life, made of drinking, songs and poems, still exalted by the romance she lives with Irina (Dinara Drukarova), her eldest and her landlady. It was with her that Laura should have left for Murmansk, in order to see the Neolithic petroglyphs which are the attraction of the city. But Irina has better things to do in Moscow, and her young lover will have to travel alone.
On the outside, one seems to recognize the times after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the resilience of the bureaucracy and the first waves of the tsunami of consumer goods. To this historical uncertainty is added the indecision of a light which always seems attracted to the night. It is in this fog that the two passengers in compartment 6, Laura and Lioha (Yuriy Borisov), a young tattooed man with a shaved head that Laura discovers already seated at a table in front of a breakfast of sausage washed down with colorless alcohol, are advancing.
Great actors
We must warn here that the director takes his time to stabilize the register of his film, and that the first third consists of a somewhat sadistic game with regard to the spectator, constantly incited to worry about the young Laura, whose he energy and the taste for adventure border on unconsciousness, particularly during a prolonged stop in a sinister city lost in the forest. If you don’t want to know more, stop reading there and go see Compartment n ° 6, because the actors are formidable and the slightly muddy image fits like a glove at this moment in history which saw the end of the really existing socialism and the advent of small video cameras.
After this warning, let’s reveal that Compartment n ° 6 is a celebration of youth, and a pretty (and at times awkward) subversion of romantic film clichés. Here, it’s the woman who decides the tempo, it’s the boy who is there to help her discover herself. The dialogues are parsimonious, yet one could write pages on Laura’s mood swings and emotions, so much the actress Seidi Haarla masters her character. Finally, exploring Murmansk and its surroundings in heavy weather adds a spectacular note to what has until then been a closed door on a crowded train.
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