Shultes (2008) Reviews

• trying hard to be meaningful...

  pwolfcarius2008-07-09

  This picture is OK, but not great, detached, unsentimental, unpsychological and even impersonal, as often these days, mysterious without reason ; Shultes, the main character, is not only solitary and impenetrable, but suffers from amnesia (an easy symbol of the way Russia today forgets itself, I suppose, but making little difference to the picture itself...) ; he lives with his old and sick mother, but they just watch TV together in the evening, not exchanging one single word ; he does a bit of running, a bit of stealing, and he's quite good at picking pockets (maybe the picture tries to be "Bressonian"... but here stealing is not prideful self-assertion, nor anything else... it's just a meaningless way of survival... The only really great part is when we see actress Cecile Piege, in a little film she shot of herself on her portable camera, making a passionate declaration to an unseen (and to everybody else unknown) man, then singing (or miming ?) a punkish song for him ; and I'd like very much to know what the title of this song is, and who sings it in reality...