A Black Rose Is an Emblem of Sorrow, a Red Rose an Emblem of Love (1990)
The story happens mainly around "The Old Arbat Street" in the center of Moscow, where always concentrate vendors, poor young artists and musicians. The hero of this film is a boy named Mitiya,who lives with eccentric elder friend in an apartment house on "The Old Arbat". In fact, people who then appear around Mitiya are all unique, eccentric and the space of the apartment house begins to have an unrealistic character as a miniature of unstable society in the end of Soviet Union.
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Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.
A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."
Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.
One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.
When this movie was originally released, I was still living in the former USSR and went to see it in the theater. I was about 15 years old and didn't understand much, but it was so beautifully absurd, bizarre and hilarious that I couldn't help but love it. I still do. Sergei Soloviev used the language of Russian counter-culture to present a mythological vision of his country and his own surroundings. Everything is taking place in an old apartment on Arbat street, which is continuously being infested with all sorts of outrageous characters (and sometimes even historical figures) who, on the course of their bizarre appearances, make numerous comments on various Russian cultural, historical and political happenings. Everything is, once again, deliciously bizarre, freaky and funny. This movie is definitely worth a try.
"Chyornaya roza..." is a funny film full of the sense of pop=culture in the end of Soviet era The story happens mainly around "The Old Arbat Street" in the center of Moscow, where always concentrate vendors, poor young artists and musicians. The hero of this film is a boy named Mitiya,who lives with eccentric elder friend in an apartment house on "The Old Arbat". In fact, people who then appear around Mitiya are all unique, eccentric and the space of the apartment house begins to have an unrealistic character as a miniature of unstable society in the end of Soviet Union. Outstanding is the episode of orgy shot in B/W with accelerated motion, where also appears the director Sergei Alexandrocvich himself.
Well, if you if you value your last remnants of sanity do not watch this one. I consider Soloviev as one of the greatest movie directors of the Later Days Commissars Regime. In this one he repeatedly pokes our collective mirror reflection with a sharp stick in the eye. This movie is absurd and beautiful at the same time. American public should have no trouble understanding it - after legalization of LSD that is.