[img]7|left|||no_popup[/img]A delightful penchant for inappropriately spouting Shakespeare in the midst of a children’s play isn’t the only sign of life beneath Arcady’s worn façade. A sparkle in actor Aleksey Maklakov’s eye, a burst of passion, a gesture…we get the feeling there is a bon vivant coiled inside Arcady, suppressed by the inertia of countless years performing the same role in the same play in the same theatre.  This inertia has the entire cast stuck in rut but it is Arcady who has the talent and passion to be more than a rabbit in a cutesy fairytale. The role of King Lear, for example, beckons.

They say that repeating the same thing over and over again while expecting a different outcome is the definition of insanity. Vyacheslav Ross’s quiet film offers a rejoinder, loosely sketched in part from the notion that one has to suffer for art but taken mostly from the Russian stoicism that endures bitter living just as well as bitter weather. There is the feeling, in the insular environment of the theatre, of an acceptance that this is the way things are. The dreamers keep dreaming, the promisers keep promising, and nothing moves forward or backward. If there are lives outside the theatre, the film only hints at it. Even when change comes to the theatre in the form of a boorish philistine who fancies himself a theatre owner — the usual confusion between having money and having good sense — Arcady’s chance at the leading role of a vampire in a lurid melodrama only reinforces the status quo instead of shaking it up. Arcady’s minor acts of rebellion prove amusing to his fellows, or annoying, or both, yet ultimately are powerless against the sheer mass of comfortable apathy.

Fat Stupid Rabbit is a film about a life in progress. Without a grand narrative structure or heavy plot, the fascination lies in the details – dialogue, occurrences that are both mundane and dramatic, and faces. Faces! What a film that has such fascinating faces in it. Real faces, not airbrushed magazine constructs, full of character and expression that offers something for viewers to latch onto while the script hangs back. Details, also, in Ross’s direction. He shows restraint by avoiding the pall of melodrama and sentimentality, key to the film’s natural ebb and flow, but he also carefully indulges a keen eye for beauty. Starting with cinematography by Maxim Shinkorenko that is lavish without pretense, continuing with little flourishes such as scene transitions literally modeled on theatre curtains, excited by Maxim Pokrovsky’s lively score, and polished with a few touches that border on the surreal without defying belief, Fat Stupid Rabbit has the visual backbone to ease audiences into engaging the characters by picking up on implications. To demand this sort of attention from viewers accustomed to having every how and why explained is an accomplishment, especially for a debut feature.

It is not the first film, of course, to touch on the collision of dreams with reality. But Fat Stupid Rabbit refreshingly lacks the grandstanding and self-help pabulum of movies intent on manipulating people into feeling like audience members at a taping of Oprah. Foregoing shiny optimism, thank goodness, the film is nonetheless far from bleak. No Kafkaesque shadow here, nor hopeless conflict with dehumanizing forces. Though resistant to giving outright explanations and playing armchair psychologist, content with leaving audiences to fend for themselves in deciphering the cast’s performances, there is a robust, nuanced humanity at play. To call it quirky would imply a certain kind of sitcom eccentricity. But humans are already comical creatures in their daily habits and personal idiosyncrasies – Ross and his cast memorably extract measured humour and pathos from these – without cultivating cartoons. For those intent on taking away a life lesson or moral, however, Ross offers a modest and convincing little spark that is at once obvious yet tender, a glimmer of candlelight against insidious, quietly endured desperation.

Entertainment: ** (out of two)
Craft: ** (out of two)
Gold star recommendation!

Fat Stupid Rabbit. Written and directed by Vyacheslav Ross (as Slava Ross). Starring Aleksey Maklakov, Sofia Oleynik, Mushroom (as Sonya Oleynik), Vladimir Dolinsky, Aleksandr Bashirov, Sergei Bekhterev, Olga Matushkina, Nikita Mikhalkov and Andrei Bronnikov. 89 minutes. In Russian with English subtitles. Available on DVD through Echelon Studios (www.echelonstudios.us)

Frédérik invites you to discuss Fat Stupid Rabbit at his blog.