Free Floating
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Free Floating (2006) (Russian: Свободное плавание, Svobodnoe Plavanie) is an absurdist tale about Losers. They do not achieve, they do not try, they practically do not talk, and they do not even have sex. There is nothing to tell about them, and even if there was nobody would be interested to listen. The movie got rather contradictory reviews, ranging from the revival of great traditions of Soviet realism, to "lifeless coupling of idiots and poor roads" (referring to the famous two major problems of Russia).
There are no stars in this film. Two main characters are played by young actors Aleksandr Yatsenko and Darya Ekamasova. Directed by Boris Khlebnikov, author of Koktebel.
[edit] Plot summary
Khlebnikov's "humor of the everyday" asks us to look again at the world about us. Lyonya's work at the local factory and his hoped–for career disappears when the plant is taken over by 'the Americans' and closed down. He becomes a regular visitor to the employment office and attempts a variety of dead end jobs — shoe seller in a market, plasterer, road crew. He eventually meets a woman he went to school with and after a bad start, gets things on the right track. Set in a small town on the Volga, where enthusiasm for anything seems somewhat relaxed, hardly anything actually happens, but through Khlebnikov's quirky, absurdist observation — a picture of Chuck Norris on a workbench, trying on shoes, a woman peeling a boiled egg, the creaking door of the employment office — we come to know the floating life.
