Dislike (film, 1991)

The plot of the film is built as a series of short episodes from the life of a girl Rita (Ksenia Kachalina). At the cinema, where the heroine comes with her friend Roma, she meets a photographer ( Stanislav Lyubshin ). A few adult man begins to courtship, to which Rita easily responds without interrupting relations with Roma at the same time.

Between dates, a young woman talks with her best friend Bubastisa and looks at magazine photographs of Marilyn Monroe ; the American actress is constantly present in the film - sometimes in the recording, then in the thoughts and dreams of the heroine.

Once, taking her own photo, Rita on the back captures the results of her life: lists the men she met, mentions feelings of guilt before her parents, confesses to loneliness, calculates debts and asks herself the question: “What should I do?” In the “Conclusion” column, she writes: "Nothing." Hopelessness and restlessness push the heroine on an irreparable step.

The script for the future film was the thesis of VGIK graduate Renata Litvinova. However, the university professors, according to the playwright, refused to accept “Dislike”; at the department she was given a negative review. To defend herself, Litvinova three times rewrote the work ^{[2] [4]} .

Soon, Sergey Solovyov got acquainted with the initial version of the script. It seemed to the director that in him Litvinov “caught the mood of that era”, and he decided to launch “Dislike” in production. However, Solovyov could not make a film because of his employment, so he handed over the script to Valery Rubinchik, and later helped the picture to be released ^[4] .

Most critics rated the film "Dislike" adjusted for the time of creation and action. So, film critic Tatyana Moskvina noted that Rita, like other heroines of the early films of Litvinova, “suffers from the aggression of a deeply disabled world” ^[5] . The reviewer Natalya Basina ( Novaya Gazeta ), in a review of “Dislike”, recalled that the early 1990s were a time of defrauded hopes, when “the ground went out from under my feet, and Ivana Tsarevichi turned into Gray Wolves” ^[6] .

The heroine of the film aroused polar opinions. If Lyubov Arkus (“The Latest Encyclopedia of Russian Cinema”) emphasized Rita’s “homelessness and incorporeality”, and also complained that Ksenia Kachalina hadn’t been able to play such a “defenseless and dangerous eternal child” ^[7] , then Dmitry Bykov in the article , dedicated to the mythology of work in the cinema, admitted that the heroine is openly annoying him ^[8] :

The operator’s work deserved separate evaluations: film critics drew attention to the “black-and-white image with dissolving light effects and contrasting orange-blue inserts” ^[1] , as well as the impregnation of the tape with “some kind of lunar radiance” ^[6] .

“Dislike” was the first step towards building the image that later became Litvinova’s corporate identity, Natalya Basina is convinced ^[6] :

• Valery Rubinchik - Director
• Renata Litvinova - screenwriter
• Oleg Martynov - operator
• Irina Kalashnikova - production designer
• Margarita Pasukhina - sound engineer

• Kinotavr Open Russian Film Festival (1992) - Prize for Best Actress (Ksenia Kachalina)
• International Film Festival in Berlin (1992) - participation in the Panorama program
• Golden Aries (1993) - Award for Best Cinematography (Oleg Martynov)
• “ Nika ” (1993) - nomination “ For the best camera work ” (Oleg Martynov)

• Information about the film in the Encyclopedia of Russian Cinema