The Working History of Petersburg's Portrait of a Stranger

St Petersburg, which has just entered the 20th century, is centered on a middle-class girl. She lost her mother when she was a child, indulged in pornographic movies in private, got mixed up with a group of photographers who sold pornographic photos, loved and suffered, and finally left the West. ...

The Story of the Deformed Man, 1999 Best Film at the Carney Film Festival in Russia. The background is the year when the film started shooting. Engineers in Rylov often watch the train full of water at the window before it leaves. One day, he invited a young photographer who fell in love with his daughter Lisa to dinner at home. He optimistically looks forward to the development of movies and thinks that "everyone will watch movies, and we are at the old and new level." "The implication is that movies will bring mankind to an era of universal viewing, and people will see more worlds that they could not have seen originally because of movies. Yes, Rylov's statement is almost in line with the historical evolution, just like Benjamin's point of view, but the evolution of the incident is by no means so simple. The question is: what is the content of the film and how to make it.

The story of director Balabanov is divided into three groups: engineer Rylov, daughter Lisa and maid; The doctor who adopted conjoined babies and his beautiful blind wife and maid; The underground group shooting SM photos and films includes: the leading group, John who is as cold as the devil and has a strong Oedipus complex (also the brother of the engineer's maid), the gangster Vito Ivanovich who sells photos for the group, the photographer, and the old mother who flogged John. Balabanov weaves the life world of these three groups into a ukiyo-e painting of the times with delicate plots and extraordinary image persuasiveness.

The portrait of Moscow makes people almost understate violence. The question is not what the audience saw, but what they didn't see. John killed the landlord who rented the house in the basement, and when he killed the doctor in the engineer's room, he drew a gun at close range and killed the other person. For Balabanov, it seems that the essence of violence is so straightforward and cold, without any carelessness. But the horror conveyed by the calm and picturesque image and the precise role structure is chilling, because the violence he wants to talk about comes from the deep human nature and social structure. Relatively speaking, the action is only slight and minor, and only close-ups are brought out to cover up the inner violence without action. At this point, we can say that at the end of the century after the film development, Balabanov intended to use concrete art to resist the degradation of the image. The filming of this film, at least in terms of expression, will always be unique and unrepeatable.