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KRISANA (FALLEN)
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Dir: Fred Kelemen, 2005, Germany/Latvia, b/w, 88 mins, Latvian/Russian with English subtitles
Cast: Egons Dombrovskis, Nikolaj Korobov, Vigo Roga, Aija Dzerve

Set in an eerie, post communist Latvia, acclaimed director Fred Keleman’s Krisana is a film about loss and its infinite, often quite unimagined, consequence. On the one hand, it is an unravelling mystery, driven by an existential, or maybe voyeuristic, bent. Yet, like much cinema from the European mainland, it’s also an uncompromising study of human frailty. So much so, that some viewers will inevitably find the deliberately slow pace and sparse dialogue a little too suffocating.

The set-up is, on the surface at least, straightforward. Matiss (Dombrovskis), a somewhat lonely archivist, walks past a woman who appears ready to jump off a bridge. He walks past, only to hear the sound of water rippling and a cry for help. Distraught, Matiss begins digging into the dead woman’s life, befriending her former boyfriend Alexej (Korobov) as he seeks answers for this tragedy. Kelemen is ambiguous over Matiss’s motivation. Is he genuinely stung by his own failure to help the girl? Or is this the behaviour of a lonely man with a pokey flat and a bottle of Vodka for company?

As the film progresses, you realise it is perhaps both. Matiss is falling in love with the girl, pictures of her adorning his wall. And when he finds out that her relationship was unhappy, he cannot control his anger toward her old lover. As the narrative unfolds, Krisana reveals more than a few noirish traits. In Kelemen’s Latvia, everybody appears alone, even when, literally speaking, they are not. Secret sadness is carved into expressions of the few characters in this very well acted piece. This is a classic trait of the genre; Krisana’s characters are uniformly removed from a sense of belonging. Latvia lends itself to such a style, a place where the rigid strictures of totalitarian communism have been vaporised, leaving behind a vacuum where identity and self-worth are far more elusive than Vodka and unhappiness.

Slow tracking shots, intense close-ups and sparse, anaemic dialogue all create this stifling atmosphere. Sound is used superbly well too. Often, Kelemen gives the audience just the detached sounds of urban wildlife, almost like disembodied, faint echoes from the essence of this society which the film hides away quite assiduously.

However, with an allegorical tale like this, there will always be the problem of character credulity. In this lonely world, Matiss barely has to work hard to gain the trust of Alexej; their relationship is short but not entirely convincing. Also, the screenplay at times lacks a certain edge and quality to match up with other aspects of Krisana. It doesn’t really capture the nuances of these sad characters. That said, Kelemen does supply a shocking ending, reminding us that it is perhaps our sense of reality which is the ultimate human illusion.

Krisana may be a difficult watch, but its portrayal of a mysterious yet banal world of lonely people has moments of beguiling quality.

Vik Iyer, Film Exposed, 29 September 2006

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