Sezon Tumanov (Anna Tchernakova, 2009)

The Season of Mists is a rarity as an Anglo-Russian co-production and unsurprisingly takes a bridging of the gap between the two cultures as its theme. Crossing and re-crossing the divide is Marina, a 40-year-old Russian married to an Englishman, feeling increasingly trapped in a Leicestershire village until the arrival of a band of Russian musicians gives her outlet for her longings in the form of a tempestuous affair.
The emigre's saudade for an idealised homeland has a universality of appeal, and Tchernakova handles the emotional content sensitively. A pity, then, that the film is let down on so many fronts: cringeworthily inept acting from Marina's daughter, a minuscule budget making a mess of chunks of the English synced dialogue, and some half-baked side characters, including a trio of semi-comic biddies in Marina's hairdressing salon, and Dudley Sutton stumbling around burbling about aliens having abducted his wife, which is clearly meant to lend mystical pathos to the themes of outsiders and events beyond one's control, but just strikes a daft false note.

4/10