Film review: ‘COMPARTMENT NO.6’ by Nick Gardener from ‘Built For Speed’
The Cannes Grand Prix award winning Finnish film Compartment No. 6 is a surprisingly and impressively gritty and moody take on the romantic drama genre.
Here, young Finnish woman Laura (Seidi Haarla) leaves her lover, Russian academic Irina (Dinara Drukarova) in Moscow to travel to Russia’s frozen north in Murmansk to view ancient petroglyphs (i.e. rock carvings). The train journey sees Laura forced to share a cramped compartment with a crass, obnoxious, vodka-swilling, sausage-eating Russian miner, Lyokha (Yuri Borisov). Initially and justifiably repulsed by this oaf, she slowly begins to warm to him as he makes fumbling attempts to prove he’s not a completely objectionable numbskull.
This is the second feature film for Finnish director Juho Kuosmanen after his debut, The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki (2016). He gives this film the grim threatening look of a Scandi noir thriller which, given the very questionable Lyokha, keeps us on edge and concerned about Laura’s welfare.
Just as menacing is the film’s depiction of the standard of train travel in Russia as the taps don’t work, the dining car has no food and the officious and forbidding looking female guard leaves them with the charming request ‘no spitting on the floor’.
Following someone’s rather dour journey through a grey and freezing cold Russian landscape with much of it taking place in the visually limited setting of a dingy train, might prove unappealing to some viewers. Still, Kuosmanen, creates an effectively tense environment and a statement about the way in which people are forced to cohabit. To this end the film is more concerned with personal and cultural differences rather than Finnish and Russian political tensions that have recently become more apparent.
Seidi Haarla gives a wonderfully natural performance as Laura. She shifts effortlessly between fury and amusement at the boorish Lyokha and between optimism and despondency at her situation. She convincingly mixes strength and vulnerability as we fear for her welfare at times but admire her resilience and unwillingness to take crap from anyone. Yuri Borisov is also excellent as Lyokha. He makes him genuinely dislikeable at first but slowly reveals layers of insecurity and self-loathing that explain if not justify his behaviour. The awkward rapprochement between him and Laura is often quite moving and its this awkward but charming relationship that defines this often quite affecting film.
Nick’s rating: ***1/2
Genre: Drama/ Romance.
Classification: MA15+.
Director(s): Juho Kuosmanen.
Release date: 7th July 2022.
Running time: 100 mins.
Reviewer: Nick Gardener can be heard on “Built For Speed” every Friday night from 8-10pm on 88.3 Southern FM.