★★★½
“Makes a good point”
Whenever the Olympics are on, we love watching the weird sports that never get covered the rest of the time. That means things like handball, archery and fencing, so I was particularly interested by this Russian film, based around the quest for gold in the women’s sabre event. While it does struggle to move past the usual cliches of sports films, it’s done with enough energy to work. The two protagonists are Aleksandra Pokrovskaya (Khodchenkova), a veteran coming to the end of a long, successful career, and Kira Egorova (Miloslavskaya), a brash teenager who arrives on the scene with a blast, and whose unconventional style causes fits among other fencers. Aleksandra has one final crack at the prize which has eluded her – an Olympic gold – but Kira poses an unprecedented threat to that ambition.
Yeah, like I said: it’s pretty much Sportsball Movie #4. You know from the start that Aleks and Kira are going to bash heads, but eventually come to a mutual respect for each other’s talents and abilities. Nor is it any surprise when Kira suffers a potentially career-ending injury, and Aleks overcomes her concerns to nurse her back to health [in fairness, she was partly responsible for the incident]. And could the two fencers possibly end up facing each other in the final match at the Olympics? Wild horses could not drag that answer to that question from my lips.
Oh, who am I kidding. Of course they do. But it is to the film’s credit that I genuinely did not know how that was going to turn out. For the makers do a very good job of giving us two well-developed characters. Rather than protagonist/antagonist in the Rocky mould, we get two protagonists, each with their own set of motivations and ambitions. Initially, Kira seems the less likable of the pair, but the more we learn about her background, such as the fraught relationship with her father, the more I came to understand her abrasive personality and don’t give a damn attitude. [Khodchenkova may be familiar, as she has appeared in some Western movies, including The Wolverine and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy]
It is an issue that fencing at the top level is astonishingly fast. It’s not like cinematic sword fighting, where battles go on for minutes. Here, if your first attack doesn’t hit the mark, you’re likely to find yourself on the receiving, pointy end of your opponent’s weapon. But Bordukov does a good job of capturing the speed, and making it work for the film’s benefit, rather than its detriment. While there may be precious little about the storyline that’s original, it still makes for an engaging couple of hours. If you weren’t a fencing fan before, this might change your mind. So, that’s fencing out of the way, and we already had our Olympic archery movie. and handball film. I just need to find a synchronized swimming movie – and, don’t be fooled, they are hardcore – then I’ll be happy.
Dir: Eduard Bordukov
Star: Svetlana Khodchenkova, Stasya Miloslavskaya, Sergei Puskepalis, Alexey Barabash