New Russian movie now playing

[Buratino]

By V.A. MUSETTO
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Rating: 3 stars

April 25, 2003 --
HOUSE OF FOOLS

In Russian, with English subtitles. Running time: 104 minutes. Not rated (wartime violence). At the Quad, 13th Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.


TWO of the most interesting films from January's Rotterdam Film Festival have just surfaced in New York.

Lucas Moodysson's dynamic "Lilya 4-Ever" debuted last Friday. Today brings the charming black comedy "House of Fools," by noted Russian director Andrei Konchalovsky.

It focuses on Janna, a naive, freckle-faced patient in a mental hospital in Chechnya who soothes fellow inmates with her accordion playing and is convinced that she is engaged to Canadian pop star Bryan Adams (who has a cameo).

It's 1996 and war rages between Moscow and freedom fighters in the breakaway province.

As Russian troops close in on the hospital, the medical staff flees, leaving Janna and the others to fend for themselves.

A small band of Chechen rebels takes refuge in the asylum, throwing the patients' carefully regulated lives into chaos.

One of the troops jokes about marrying Janna (sweetly played by Julia Vysotsky, who prepared for the role by spending two months with patients in a clinic).

She takes the soldier seriously and - decked out in a beautiful white dress and large hat - prepares to go away with him.

Alas, it is not to be.

Konchalovsky, best known here for "Runaway Train" (1985), takes on a difficult subject with a light mix of dark humor and pathos.

By the closing credits, we realize that the patients are better able to face life than are many people on the outside.

"House of Fools" was the Russian nominee for foreign-language Oscar. It didn't come even close to winning, but stands heads and shoulders above the film ("Nowhere in Africa") that did take the laurel.


http://www.nypost.com/movies/56925.htm