Travelling with Pets (2007)

Simply A Masterpiece

Don't listen to the negative reviews

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Your classic art movie - the red head girl is pursuing a remarkably durable and buoyant red balloon, when her cow-milking rail worker "master" croaks in the background of the grey, 'scope frame. This is not going to be a fun movie.The conventions of the "serious" Russian cinema get topped up with a dose of seventies feminism, as the girl slave-wife asserts herself, burying her keeper and using his milk churn of money to acquire a dog, a goat and a flat screen TV, rejecting the rugged single father truck driver in favour of raising an orphan that she recruits from her old institution and takes away in the row boat she has been tarring throughout the picture. Guaranteed festival prize winner.The minimal plot is tricked out with vista shots of isolation & misery occasionally disrupted, as when the strain makes an unscheduled stop disgorging passengers who are taken with her appearance in the scarlet suit. Miss Kutepova manages to work up some interest, playing it all po-faced in her first major role.Murky Ruskie colour of the kind we hoped we had seen the end of with glasnost. The film is too long and too slow but has mood and craft skill going for it. The raunchy bits help.What happens to the TV?

I find it unfathomable that so many films today are made without the benefit of a cogent script. "Travelling With Pets" is another that fits in this category. Minimal dialog throughout. Basically, we watch the day to day life of an eccentric/borderline insane woman who buries her husband and has what might or might not be considered a relationship with a man who gives her a ride in his truck. She buys a flat panel TV but cannot get any reception and her manfriend tells her she needs an antenna and proceeds to install it on her roof. Wow! Just doesn't getting anymore interesting that that, huh? It is a strange little movie and much of the woman's bizarre behavior is never really explained. The whole thing really doesn't amount to much of anything. The fine cinematography is the sole reason that I remained in my seat. Not enough to recommend, though. 4/10

I don't want to blame this movie because director is woman and that's not a reason why I didn't enjoy this movie. I really didn't understand what director wanted to say or talking about. About fate of Russian women, about loneliness, about necessity to be strong and use men only for child producing? I like this strange mood in this movie, great actors, but this movie pretends smarter than it is. Basically, I had strange feeling that director really doesn't understand what she wants to say with this movie and all strange things are just because they look strange. It's a some kind of so-called pseudo-intellectualism what we can see in many many European independent movies. And people don't want to say that they didn't understand this movie just because there are many critics who will find this movie so useful. And very deep. And very actual. Let's call things in their real names.

This was the best of 12 films I saw at the 2007 Warsaw film festival. If you liked 'Euforia' or 'The Return', you'll love this. A woman is stuck in the middle of nowhere in the middle of Russia, living in a shack by a railway line. Her husband dies and all she has are a few animals for company and a guy she gets a lift to the mortuary with. She must learn to live on her own and decide her life for herself. While it may sound simplistic, the film is very lyrical and very moving, with some very funny moments and moments of sheer pathos. Cinematography is great, acting too and the overall atmosphere is almost haunting. Well worth an hour and a half of your time.