Word: oblomov
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...Sergei Oblomov (Marcello Mastroianni), a sinister Russian tailor, is Mme, de la Fontaine's long-lost first husband, inexplicably sneaking through the most stylish closets in town until they are reunited. Loren pays homage to the couple's steamy screen history with a reenactment of a striptease she last performed for Mastroianni in 1964. We should all look this good in garters when we're sixty-something...
...want to live abroad. Those who do emigrate often suffer from chronic homesickness. Though keenly embarrassed by their economic and social backwardness, they believe passionately in the inherent superiority of their own soulfulness when compared with the arid materialism of the West. Ivan Goncharov's classic 19th century novel, Oblomov, presents the ethnic German Stolz as a model of energy and industry, but it is the dreamy Russian Oblomov who handily wins the competition of cultures. It may take Oblomov most of the day just to get out of bed, but he wins our hearts by his valiant and endearing...
Dark Eyes illustrates Romano's saga with colorful acting and superb cinematography. Like Mikhalkov's earlier Oblomov, Dark Eyes is set in an era of decadence. It is fun to see the fancy balls, elaborate spas, mansions and frills that are all part of the scene. Mikhalkov's characters move about in this effusively elegant world with a naturalness which most films about the turn-of-the-century fail to capture. But with its shift from one setting to another, the film almost has the feel of a pictorial travelogue...
There is more at stake here than simple laziness. The adaptation makes much of the childish contentment Oblomov found at his doting mother's knee. As the film intercuts the adult story with the dozing country milieu of the boy's intense but innocent love, one comes to understand that Oblomov's objections to modernism are principled. Once he actually knew a better world that he cannot help trying to reembrace...
There are few big laughs in Oblomov, but it has something of the sotto voce subversiveness that Director Nikita Mikhalkov brought to A Slave of Love, his study of early Russian film makers. He knows how to generate moral and intellectual tension in unlikely places, how to speak for individuality in a place where it is not highly valued. In short, he is an artist-and a fine one. -By Richard Schickel