Just as the Soviet empire was balancing in August 1991 on the verge of the return of the hermetic totalitarian power of the party elite and the war of all against all, the film balances between genres of drama, phantasmagoria, mystery play and high tragedy.

The narrative is a solid well-knit chronicle of the collapse of a family. In the idyllic setting, with the sea, beach, cliffs, high-class sanatorium at Crimian resort, light dresses , — there is conflict, discord. Treason, spying and skeletons in closets displace the peaceful resort.

Introducing the film, Egor Konchalovsky stressed that the picture’s atmosphere reminds him of Chekhov’s and Bunin’s works, - anticipating and snapshotting the revolution catastrophe through the transmission of signs and pressure of the impending and incurred ending, which were literally saturating the air.

Straight up, this is my 300th blog post. I’ve had several ideas to celebrate this milestone, including a review of 300 (gimmicky I know) and the cringe-worthy equivalent to a clip show episode of a sitcom (in the form of top-five reviews etc). However, I could not think of a better commemoration than this review.

Lev Prudkin and Vladimir Prudkin’s film No-One takes a crucial moment in the history of the Soviet Union and uses the political machinations of an attempted coup as the backdrop to a personal drama playing out hundreds of miles away from the Russian capital. A sex-comedy with a Chekhovian flavour, No-One has a ponderous grandness that contrasts with the, sometimes grubby, machinations of marital betrayal and the emptiness of a middle-class existence.

This film is an intricate view at one of the most significant political and social shifts in history through the prism of human relationships.
The shift of a paradigm of a whole cultural layer, results in a distortion of human behavior and its expression in interactions and relationships.
An intelligence general turns to a mind boggling form of art, in his understanding.
A silver-spoon film director attempting to quench his significance through surreptitious mischief
A prominent actress seeking for her expression through unreasonable adultery
And all this occurring away from the stage of events of the political coup attempt of 1991.