Indeed, a girl convincing a boy to escape with her and leading him on the path of crime is not enough to talk about noir movie and dark ladies. And actually, in Larisa Sadilova’s Sonny, Andrej and Rita’s runaway – and the homicide they seem to have played a role in – is mostly a pretext for the director to focus on Igor, Andrej’s father, and to depict his character and the parent-child relationship. Both elements are defined more by objects (Igor’s owl-shaped decor, the stereo he switches off when he thinks Andrej’s sleeping) than by words, which could allow you to put the movie in the already crowded shelf of the “lack of communication dramas”... But Sadilova (also author of the screenplay) knows how to play her cards, one of the most important being Viktor Sukhorukov’s well-measured performance. The veteran thespian plays a man who – unable to overcome the fact that his wife left him when Andrej was a baby – deals better with animals (either the fake owls and the living bees) than with human beings. Despite his will to find and save his son, he constantly acts in a passive way, letting the others lead him (as with the reporters and the policemen) and seemingly unable to break the same frame Andrej (and Rita) are escaping from. Regarding this, a mention necessarily goes to the camera work, with the recurring use of lockdown shots that stand out particularly when Igor is, indeed, “framed” in his flat’s interior.
In summary, I don’t see any reason why Sonny couldn’t repeat the achievement of Lidiya Bobrova’s Babusya, which is – as far as I can remember – the only precedent as for Russian titles in competition at Kino Otok and ended up by deservedly winning the “Harvest” section back in 2004.
Sonny (Synok), Larisa Sadilova, Russia 2009
RIYL:
The clockmaker of St. Paul (L’horloger de Saint-Paul), Bertrand Tavernier, France 1974
PIERVI
Photo: Jože Rehberger Ogrin
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