News From the Other World
The Mamleev family portrait, set in the cramped interior of a small Moscow flat, is an experiment in metaphysical documentary making. Yury Mamleev, the great writer of the Russian chthonic, plays with a cat while his wife, the translator Maria Mamleeva, flips through a photo album from their émigré years in Paris and America. But something eerie seeps into these scenes of simple comfort, vaguely manifesting itself in the ell...