Just about every Russian film we’ve watched recently has been by Andrey Zvyagintsev, an indication of how influential he is and how he is seen as the best director at depicting contemporary Russian society. This is an earlier film before both the standout Leviathan and Loveless and unfortunately I found it to be nowhere as good.

Elena is a middle-aged woman who is married to an older business tycoon named Vladimir. Though she lives with him in a luxurious apartment, her own origins are humble as we see when she visits her son Sergey from a previous relationship. He lives in a cramped flat with his family and being jobless lives on Elena’s pension. During one such visit, he asks for a large sum of money from his mother, apparently to used to ensure that his own eldest son has a place in university and is not forced to enlist into the military. Vladimir is reluctant to provide the money though he is easily able to afford it and lambasts Sergey for having children without being able to provide for them. His relationship with his own daughter Katya is poor as he also regards her as being a useless person who sponges off of his money. Nevertheless when he has a heart attack while exercising in the gym, he reconnects with her. Even as Elena takes care of him, he decides to write his will leaving all of his property to Katya while providing only a lifetime annuity for Elena.

While it is beautifully shot and has a definite theme, Elena is unfortunately too simple and straightforward to be an effective film. The contrast between the expensively appointed apartment Elena lives in and the perfectly ordered life she assists Vladimir with to the grubby flat inhabited by Sergey’s family with their videogames and potato chips looks stark but is really nothing new. The most interesting part of the film to me is, in keeping with rest of the director’s oeuvre, how a cynical a view of Russian society it presents. There are no good characters here, only varying shades of selfishness and ingratitude. Elena commits an evil act in order to secure a share of Vladimir’s fortune for her own son but then Vladimir himself appears to hold no real affection for her and may have simply married her, a former nurse, in order to have someone care for him. Both Katya and Sergey expect to be given some of Vladimir’s money and have no care as to whether or not they have done anything to earn that money. It’s an indictment against everyone at every level of society.

Also intriguing is the way that you can anticipate certain events that must happen and the director knows it and deliberately strings the audience along to create tension. For example once all of the characters are in place, the audience instinctively knows that Vladimir must die in order for the film to move on to the next phase. So the director proceeds to tease the audience with various means by which that might happen, such as being distracted while driving. A more puzzling inclusion is a scene in which Sergey’s son joins his friends to beat up on another group. It doesn’t seem to pertain directly to the film’s themes except to show that the rot goes all the way down to the children.

Overall Elena fits in well with the rest of Zvyagintsev’s work  as a powerful critique of Russian society but lacks the sophistication of the later and better films. It’s not bad but it’s still a disappointment.