Ukrainian film to bow in New York May 1 (04/26/98)

Ukrainian film to bow in New York May 1

NEW YORK - Ukraine's official entry in the 1997 Motion Picture Academy Awards - the first time a Ukrainian film has been entered for Academy Award consideration - will open at the Lincoln Plaza theater and Quad Cinema Theaters here on May 1. The film, "A Friend of the Deceased," was entered in the best foreign film category. Rated R by the MPAA, it is in Russian with English subtitles.

The 100-minute color film is described by the exhibitor, Sony Pictures Classics, as a "deadpan introduction to the rough-and-tumble world of the new Ukraine, where Kyiv has become a late 20th-century Dodge City, ruled by high-flying entrepreneurs, the mob and the black market."

Although it did not achieve an Academy Award nomination, the film was officially selected for showing at the Cannes and Toronto film festivals in 1997 and was recently shown at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah.

Brendan Kelly of Variety magazine characterizes "A Friend of the Deceased" as a "wry, highly likable fable about the vagaries of life in the former Soviet state now that the Communist bosses have been replaced by crime lords and black-market merchants." Mr. Kelly praises director Vyacheslav Krishtofovich for skillfully using a script "full of sly humor and warm, well-rounded characters" to craft a "touching, picturesque drama within a finely detailed sociological landscape."

The story centers around a young unemployed translator, Anatoli (Alexandre Lazarev), who is unable to find a creative job that suits his talents. Despondent, he becomes even more depressed when his wife, Katia (Angelika Nevolina), leaves him for another man. Considering suicide, he comes up with another plan - he decides to hire a contract killer, Kostia (Constantin Kostyshin), to rub him out in the gangland fashion that has become prevalent in the newly capitalist jungle of Kyiv.

By a strange turn of events, the killer cannot carry out his task at the appointed time, and Anatoli realizes he doesn't want to die after all. Knowing that the hit man hasn't forgotten his assignment and the final payment, he hires a second killer, Ivan (Sergiy Romanyuk) to take care of the first. In the course of these events, he confers with an old army buddy, Dima (Eugen Pachin), strikes up a relationship with an energetic young prostitute, Vika (Tatiana Krivitska), and meets Kostia's beautiful young widow, Marina (Elena Korikova). The film ends on a richly ironic note.

Filmed in the capital of Ukraine, "A Friend of the Deceased" was shot primarily against the backdrop of the old quarter of Kyiv, with its cobblestoned streets, tiny cafes and magnificent Baroque churches. Anatoli's missions take him to other Kyiv locations as well - a huge monolithic housing project, still under construction, that is the home of the killer who is to eliminate him, and the nouveau-riche Kyiv that is home to night clubs, luxurious restaurants and prostitutes.

The film was directed by Mr. Krishtofovich, who was born into a Ukrainian-Polish family in Kyiv in 1947 and began his directing career at the Dovzhenko Studios in 1971. Between 1975 and 1985, he directed six television films, of which "His Own Happiness" (1979) won a special jury prize at the USSR Festival of Television Films.

Mr. Krishtofovich has directed four theatrical features, one of which, "Single Woman Seeks Lifetime Companion" (1986), won a best actress award for Irina Kouptchenko at the Montreal Film Festival. "Adam's Rib" (1991) was enthusiastically received at the Cannes, Toronto, Montreal and New York film festivals.

"A Friend of the Deceased" was shot by Vilen Kaluta, Ukraine's best-known director of photography, following a screenplay by Andrei Kourkov, a script teacher at Cambridge University. Pierre Rival of Compagnie Est Ouest in Paris and Mykola Machenko of the Dovzhenko Studios in Kyiv collaborated on the production, which was supported by the French Ministry of Culture and the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture and Arts.

The film will be shown in New York at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema, 30 Lincoln Plaza (212) 757-2280, and downtown at the Quad Cinema, 34 W. 13th St. (212) 255-8800, beginning on May 1.

Showings will open in Boston, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Buffalo later in May.