4 (review)

The opening shot of Chetyre visually introduces key elements of its critique of contemporary Russian society. Four dogs lie panting on a street corner. An ominous orange light flashes. Industrial sounds seem to warn of impending conflict. As the noise peaks, four sharp, phallic mechanical arms strike down on the street, penetrating the pavement. The frightened dogs flee. Four large plough trucks appear in the background, drive towards the camera, turn and pass behind the mechanical arms, temporarily blocking from view the craft shop situated on the street corner. The shop window is lined with bread-faced dolls.

The dog's quick retreat from industrial machinery suggests, perhaps, a romanticised longing for a return to nature: the street corner possibly functions as a metaphor for Western influence on urban Russia. This interpretation is only one of many and, as the film progresses, such ambivalences remain. Sound and imagery are provocative throughout the film, but never map simply into any allegorical or other reading. Seemingly contrasting spaces such as the natural village and the industrial city are indirectly connected through their abysmal conditions: prostitution and injustice in the city; alcoholism and economic crisis in the village. As a result, neither the city nor the village can be classified as simply positive or negative, just as neither nature nor progress can function as good or evil; rather, their pros and cons depend on the viewer's reading of Khrjanovsky's imagery and shift throughout the viewing experience.

Chetyre reveals the lives of three protagonists – Oleg (Yuri Lagute), Marina (Marina Vovchenko) and Volodya (Sergei Shnurov) – who meet by chance in an empty bar one night. As they talk, they each lie about their professions, opening up a gap between reality and identity. Oleg, a meat salesman, maintains that he is a Presidential administrator. Marina, a prostitute, says she in advertising. Volodya, a piano-tuner and musician, claims to have worked as an organic chemist in 'Mail Box', a fifty-eight-year-old government-organised cloning programme that currently produces Type-4 model clones. In this programme, clones are grown in incubators until they are healthy enough to be released in society; however, the earliest incubator, Soyuz 4, produced the first clones (twins, triplets and quadruplets), who suffered from internal disease and were sent to live in villages near Mordovia. On hearing this, Oleg leaves the bar in frustration and goes to a restaurant, where he is told that the special is 'round piglets'. He denies that there can be such a thing, but is shocked into silence by the revelation of four identically rotund and prepared piglets. When Volodya leaves the bar, he is arrested on murder charges. The next day, Marina hears of the death of her twin sister, Zoya, and travels to her family's village, located outside the industrial sector of an unknown Russian city, for the funeral.

Little else is shown of the two men. Volodya, convicted and sentenced for a murder we do not see, is forced into military service, while Oleg struggles to live with his germ-obsessed, structure-crazed father. The film instead concentrates on Marina's homecoming. The village faces economic ruin because Zoya was its only source of income: she sculpted the bread, chewed by old ladies, into faces for dolls they could sell in the city. Marina and her surviving sisters – also twins – wish to leave the village and return to the city. Marina eventually burns the remaining doll parts, along with a photograph of her and her sisters, on Zoya's grave, and departs. We return briefly to Oleg, who swerves to avoid a stray dog and crashes his car, and to Volodya, who boards a military transport plane, presumably heading to Chechnya. The film ends in uncertainty and irresolution.

Prior to their meeting in the bar, each of the three main characters has an introductory scene which foreshadows his or her fate. A steadicam frames Oleg as he is propelled along a narrow, busy hallway in a meat warehouse, alluding to a fatalistic path...