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"THE PORTRAIT OF NATASHA" CHARACTERS: NATASHA, 37 - Intellectual. Clever. Energetic. Despairing. Cheerful. Lonely. In search of a way to express her individuality. NADIA, 50 - Administrator of the theatre and mother of Valentin. Conniving, scheming, cheating, mean, power-lusting, lying, slimy, fake, grasping, vain, desperate, controlling, not entirely stupid. VALENTIN, 30 - The theatre's Artistic Director, son of Nadia. Mother's boy. Musician. Controlled and controlling, trapped, stupid, power-lusting, unsympathetic. A soviet style, non-individual. YURA, 30 - The theatre's handyman. Victim. An individual, strictly soviet style. "homo sovieticus". Slow. Funny. Difficult to pin down. Controlled. An ass-licker. Compromising and being constantly compromised. LARA, 40 - Artist & the children's' drama teacher. The perfect soviet victim. A failed individual. Alcoholic. Sad. Grasping. Lonely. Desperate. Lacking will-power. Selfish. Searching. An outcast. JIMI, 30 - The painter. MASHA, 6 - Natasha's daughter.
Scene 1: IMAGES OF MOSCOW Moscow, the setting for the film. Natasha's hometown. Shots of moving people or travelling shots through static activities. Sleeping trams and busses along the Leninski Prospekt. Cars racing though muddy, pot-holed, five-lane, inter-city streets. Women workers repairing the streets. Red scarved children with flowers, in line, going to visit Lenin's grave. Workmen with minimal tools on wooden scaffoldings. Men with buckets in hand waiting in line for beer. Drunks on the boulevard by Restaurant Uzbekistan. Bent old ladies sweeping with tiny brushes. Uzbek families with huge bundles at Bela Russia train station. The "Bird Market". People selling dogs, cats, ducks, chickens, fish, budgies. Buying things at Rizjskaya market from kiosks selling Westernised goods. Women in the big shops selling their own goods to the customers. Crowds coming up out of the metro. People outside "Pinguin" (western café), with handfuls of ice-cream cones. In between passengers on a bus. Children playing in the playground, their grannies watching. Montage: Simultaneously, a voice-over of a conversation. The conversation is fragmentary, a combination of chit-chat and directions. Pan from the city outside the window to "arrive" at the scene of the conversation. A room, two women. Jim and Natasha. And a little girl, Masha. (Natasha could be any of those people outside.)
(Children play the parts of all the characters except for that of Natasha herself.) In a brightly coloured, cartoon-like paper maché set, children, wearing over-sized costumes, more like clothes from the dressing-up box than proper theatre costumes, act out the story of a drunk man, driving in the car-park who crashes into a woman's car. Then, during the argument that follows, stabs her in the arm with a blunt bread knife. The man's wife is hysterically tearful and wails about her terrible life and that she and her children will die if her husband is sent to jail. The woman (Natasha), still clutching her bleeding arm, agrees not to prosecute. TITELS during this scene.
An atmosphere of cosy intimacy in the small room, contrasting with the big, chaotic, impersonal city outside. (People shot medium. Things close.) A blank canvas. Jim is going to paint Natasha (a spirited 37 year old, energetic, thick dark hair, expressive features, not especially fashionable but certainly not dowdy). INTERVIEW in the form of conversation. Organising paints. Natasha getting changed. What to wear for the portrait? Jim wiring two narrow brushes together to make a broader one. Setting coffee brought from Holland in a Russian "pot". Natasha stirring her cup endlessly, forgetting it's not Russian sugar (which takes ages to dissolve). MASHA, her daughter, eating cookies from Holland. (We recognise her as one of the children from the scene in cartoon set.) Setting up composition; searching for the right background, the right position for Natasha. MASHA gets sent off to the kindergarten. INTERVIEW/CONVERSATION, Natasha tells why she doesn't want to send
Masha to proper school yet, although she is almost seven. Natasha is being painted face on. (The intimate atmosphere in the room reaches a climax through slow zoom to close on Natasha talking straight to the camera.) Montage: The conversation continues briefly as a voice-over.
The theatre is compressed reality. A concrete example containing prime
elements of Soviet society; Mother and Son, (this relationship as a
metaphor for Mother Russia controlling the Russian People), Man and
Woman, Adults and Children. Entering the tall, grey, crumbling, stone building, small trees growing in the guttering, a ragged red banner with Russian text flapping above the entrance, situated on a wide, busy, mid-city road. Looking in briefly on all the other entirely different activities in
the basement there: The second-hand book dealer; a tiny office, thick with cigarette smoke, the floor and desk piled with books, the leather-jacketed proprietor bargaining hard with his customers. A pensioners meeting: Old-time speeches of self praise, "Comrades..." The theatre's office in the basement; dark, bare and impersonal, piles of paperwork. We follow one of the administrators upstairs to the theatre for children, housed in an old youth-club. The MOSCOW CHILDRENS THEATRE is a metaphor for soviet society, a magnified
mini version of the USSR, a literal and figurative stage. NADIA, the administrative director, (a well-preserved 50, smartly dressed, short greying black hair, an impersonal, somewhat calculating manner) gives a tour of the theatre, introducing us to the staff and promoting 'her' theatre. The dowdy parents are waiting for their kids on the benches in the corridor. Some helping tiny children change into their leotards. THE CHILDREN, aged between 5 and 15, mostly girls, huddled in the corridor
waiting for their lesson to begin, chatter and giggle falling into sudden
silence as Nadia passes through their midst, LARA, art and drama teacher, (a rather boyish 40 year old, smart in a plain shirt, jeans and expensive sports shoes) is alone in her room (drinking). The art room is being used for adult literacy lessons. In the hall a dance teacher is half-heartedly running a group of young children in knickers and vests (including MASHA), through some classical ballet exercises to the sound of last years' top of the pops on the cassette recorder. YURA, the handy-man, (29 years old, tall, slightly overweight, plaid shirt and jeans of an unfashionable cut) helping the technician (very fat jolly, with the remains of a 50's quiff) to repair his tacky, disco light-show. He leaves him poised, holding something while he just goes to get a piece of wire, he goes into the canteen where they're eating cake and drinking tea so he just sits down and joins in, leaving the technician to wait. VALENTIN, the 'artistic director',(30 years old, with the manner of an old man, unfashionably dressed; grey polyester trousers and boring sweater, unstyled, average hair, epitome of the 35 year-old-son whose mother still runs his life) in his room, re-taping music for a TV performance. In the canteen the administrative staff are exchanging lipsticks and drinking tea, trading and showing off. Gossiping. Back-biting. Short takes of different conflicts epitomising the difficulties and
the slowness with which things are being done.
To paint is to record reality, an abstraction of reality. Through conversations Natasha's story is revealed. In the room with Jim and Natasha. The portrait is progressing. Setting tea in the Russian way. There's no more coffee from Holland. Natasha and Jim drink tea and suck boiled sweeties. INTERVIEW/CONVERSATION; Exchanging tricks for survival in Moscow; pretend to be a foreign tourist to buy cheese at the Hotel Rossia. Where to buy condoms. Natasha tells something of her background. Natasha tells about the problems she has with her job in the institute of environmental research. Jim and Natasha continue to paint.
In the same way as the portrait is an abstraction of the flesh and
blood Natasha, an abstraction of the reality of the theatre, (and thus
of soviet society) is when other scenes in Natasha's life take on theatrical
form. The children portray her stories, surrounded by crooked paper-maché
scenery. A cartoon-like, paper maché stage set of a government building,
a sign reads (in Russian) "Ministry of the Environment".
NADIA showing the "sponsors" and government officials around,
VALENTIN at work, composing, dubbing tapes, playing along. NADIA admiring him. NADIA showing off her new coat, VALENTIN admiring it, helping her put it on. NADIA with the CHILDREN, more or less ignoring them. VALENTIN with the CHILDREN, more or less ignoring them. INTERVIEW; NADIA, VALENTIN talking about theatre. Their relationship exemplifies how people in powerful positions strive
to retain that hierarchy. VALENTIN talking about music, his "great loves" Paul McCartney, Barry Manilow. NADIA talking about her son. VALENTIN talking about his mother. NADIA, VALENTIN talking about the Children. NADIA, VALENTIN, talking about Yura. NADIA, VALENTIN, praising useless Lara and putting down the dance teacher, backing each other up uncritically. (They are obviously repetitive of one another in their behaviour and in their attitudes and opinions about theatre, people, children etc.) YURA - Anything that does not have an air of power or of glamour to it becomes his job. When all seven members of the administration are drinking tea and Yura is the only one who's working, he'll still be the one to be sent to buy stamps or to post a letter. Work is not important, it's the power structure that counts. The CHILDREN helping YURA painting some scenery whilst they wait to rehearse. YURA talking with the CHILDREN, the older girls telling him their problems at home, with their boyfriends and in the theatre. INTERVIEW - YURA talking about the Children, Nadia and Valentin, Lara, the Theatre. LARA - (In reality, Nadia and Valentin keep her on only because she has the lease for the building so they need her, and though Valentin has a soft spot for her having been her pupil since he was very young, it's clear that Nadia won't have too much trouble turning him against her in the end.) LARA giving the CHILDREN (including MASHA) drama lessons, very strict, sending them to stand in the corridor for the least disturbance. INTERVIEW - LARA talking about, the Children, Theatre, Nadia, Valentin, Yura. THE THEATRE CHILDREN The CHILDREN rehearsing, VALENTIN unable to deal with them, shouting for silence whenever the children are enthusiastically discussing their work and rarely praising them. INTERVIEW - CHILDREN talking about the theatre, Nadia and Valentin, Lara, Yura. YURA borrowing money, giving a lipstick, explaining that he needs the money to conduct the lipstick business and they'll get it back tomorrow. NADIA with her "friends" the women from the administration, hustling tickets for the theatre, inviting them to the luxury sauna of which she's a member. YURA gets sent to buy materials; curtain rail, where to find it? VALENTIN at work. NADIA admiring him, but none the less disturbing him. (Valentin tolerating it but we see his irritation with his mothers' presence.) (CONFRONTATION between NADIA and VALENTIN, instigated by interviewer...?!)
The portrait progresses... INTERVIEW/CONVERSATION - NATASHA tells what the soviet folk is like and Why. Before the revolution they were a religious folk. Natasha tells about her 86 year old, half-blind grandmother, fifty years a party member.
In another cartoon-style paper-maché scenery,
YURA at the metro station. On the metro; Children being given seats instead of grown-ups. People carrying huge backpacks, skis, fishing rods. YURA half-heartedly checking out the almost bare shops for curtain-rail. Occasionally buying some other scarcity that he happens across. Back to the metro, the station where all the deaf and dumb people gather to talk sign-language to one-another. The red-arm banded volunteers in the metro, overdoing their authority. On the metro to his sister's co-op shop for vodka. CONVERSATION; Yura bragging about a plan to be the boss of the Moscow Erotic Theatre. In the office of the co-op answering the phone, "Cognac? Champagne? Where do you think you are. Of course we don't have any!" and meanwhile there's a truck full of cognac being unloaded into the basement. YURA sweet-talks the boss of the shop and is allowed to buy a bottle. (There is no vodka.) He buys sausage, also stored away in the basement in huge, mouldy freezer rooms, (several of which are not working) stacked with piles of scarce goods. On the bus: He buys a ticket from another passenger. Honest passengers passing bus tickets to each other through the crowded bus to be stamped. A ticket-inspectors in plain clothes, springing his I.D. card on unsuspecting bus passengers. YURA with the sausage to his parents. (They are very poor and really suffering from the current shortages.) They eat a sort of sour milk paste called 'twarok', squeezed from the packet sweetened with crunched sugar-lumps. His mother shows family photos; Yura in the army. INTERVIEW; Yura's army stories; Eight months living in a trench, underground
in the snow. Sent to Poland to combat the strikers. Shot at by snipers
and wounded in the leg. On the metro to the car factory where he used to work. INTERVIEW; While waiting for an ex-girlfriend to come outside to buy
lipsticks from him he tells his story about having worked at the factory:
He was an ardent Komsomol member and gained some position as a trade-union
leader, but made the mistake of not going along with the swindling of
funds by those highly placed in the Union, the kind of ripping-off that
goes with the position and is not only accepted but expected of the
leaders. (At this, however, he's a failure. The essence of capitalism escapes
him constantly. He's unable to make this "business" work for
him and simply spends endless hours dealing goods from one end of the
city to the other as someone else's minion. Trapped in his sovietness,
wanting to be a successful westerner but not understanding what that
entails. Luckily Yura has a sense of humour and doesn't wallow in these problems but lazily lets them roll off his back, soviet apathy in this case being his saving grace. He is a victim who accepts his fate perhaps barely taking heed of it. (By now it's clear he's not going back to work for the rest of the day.) He goes to the see the girls from the Erotic Theatre: YURA acts the big-shot, would-be-theatre-director, telling them that he'll be going to Holland and will promote them a tour there. He flirts with the girls and there is a hint of jealousy, he is involved
with more than one of them. YURA stepping off the pavement to hail a taxi, is whistled back by a policeman. (It's not allowed for pedestrians to cross, or stand on, the street.) He takes a "taxi" (In Moscow almost every car driver will take paying passengers, a car is not only for personal transport but also a source of extra earnings.) CONVERSATION; with the taxi driver; a fire-man with three kids, 85 roubles a month, who goes out in his car every evening to earn extra money taxi-ing.
YURA arrives at NATASHA and JIM's with the cognac. Again, the progress of the portrait. Drinking the cognac, Russian style, each glassful in one gulp. YURA eating white chocolate for the first time, looking in wonder at
CONVERSATION - NATASHA asks about the Erotic Theatre, already knowing that nothing will have come of it. Eating liquorice wheels, YURA suspicious, thinks they're thin electric cables. INTERVIEW/CONVERSATION; Talk about women. The joke about Russians having nothing in the shops, but offering a feast to guests. Americans having everything in the shops but all a visitor gets is a cup of coffee. Talk about America, Americans. Joke about the American and the Russian chicken on the supermarket shelf... Someone phones up for Yura, more business. He tells them he's on his way out of the door and will be there in 10 minutes. YURA attempts to continue his "business" offering silver
chains to NATASHA for sale. The cognac finished, YURA leaves in a rush. NATASHA and JIM go back to painting. NATASHA tells why she feels so alone.
In another cartoon-style paper-maché scenery…
LARA at the women's sauna. Very old, crumbling, Turkish style, tiled bathhouse, clouds of steam, cracked tiles, brusque attendants, enormously fat, toothless women naked or wrapped in white sheets, here and there what could be a lesbian couple (were it not that lesbianism, like homosexuality "does not exist in the USSR".) INTERVIEW with LARA - About women. Talking about her ex-husband. About
love. LARA goes to a really grotty canteen to eat lunch. (The cooks look
like tramps from a Salvation Army hostel, filthy aprons, grubby knuckles,
scarred faces, greasy hair, grey-looking food.) LARA in her strange, dark flat. INTERVIEW - LARA talking about her youth, apparently a mulit-talented
child: Telling about her previous jobs. Her work as a street cleaner etc. Her plans and dreams and strange sketches and explanations of them.
Showing her weird paintings on the walls.
The painting progresses... INTERVIEW/CONVERSATION - NATASHA reveals her hopes and worries for
the future as catalysed by her worry for Masha her youngest daughter.
Her fear for her children's well being. THIS is what really frightens
her. MASHA comes in, dancing and chattering. INTERVIEW/CONVERSATION; Natasha's dilemma for the future, and her hopes,
despite her lack of traditional belief. (A crisis point for Natasha, brought on by her fear for her children.) Natasha's mother was one of the few people from whom Natasha was able
to feel support. She died last year.
In another cartoon-style paper-maché scenery...
Today they are to perform the long awaited "Show", a compilation
of singing and dancing, a tacky, transparent copy of cheap Hollywood
glamour that satisfies neither the child performers nor their audience.
The final rehearsal, the last steps being rehearsed, costumes being dealt out. The kids leaving the theatre to go to perform in the children's hospital. The bus ride to the hospital. Setting up on stage. Warming-up in the dressing room. The child performers changing into their tacky costumes. The audience arriving; kids in wheel chairs, kids on crutches, kids crawling and rolling on the floor. Kids with their parents, kids with nurses, kids with other kids helping them. The expectant audience. Things going wrong; the lousy sound, the light-show not working properly. The performers routinely going through the motions, stunned by the sight of the crippled, child audience. The show, a tacky parody of big-time show-bizz.
Portrait finished. (Masha has been painted with Natasha, (Short) INTERIEW/CONVERSATION - Natasha's fears for the future. Her
hopes for the future. Jim is leaving, back to Holland, taking the portrait.
The painting of the portrait is a summing-up of the film. Jim going to the Ministry of Culture to find out about exporting the painting. (There is a law banning the export of art works from the Soviet Union.) At 7am, waiting in the line. Asking about the procedure; Jim tries to bluff her way into the building. Lots of people waiting in the corridor to see an official. Queuing from 3am to get the portrait valued at the other office. Magic being worked by presenting a couple of packets of Marlboro, Getting the back of the painting stamped. (Some of these scenes played by kids in paper-maché scenery...) Jim getting on the train to Holland with the portrait wrapped up. END 'THE PORTRAIT OF NATASHA'
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