This is a film that grows on you---only taking 18 minutes to fully root in your imagination—perhaps a clip as fast as the verdant Siberian spring that it captures. Everything is growing so fast, and especially the teen stars that the camera lens trails, who any second now are going to be full-fledged adults.
No words are spoken. A cheerful piano soundtrack speaks to blossoming life—and at times slowing to show a moodiness within a 15 year old or so girl, or to do a comic sync with the sleepy boy who doesn’t want to get out of bed.
Their lives are about chores and breaks from chores. When they hang out together it’s with that same boredom you see in US suburban teens trekking through a mall. If you are a back-to-the-earth family, or know one well, this writer thinks you will be hard struck to see a difference between this remote corner of Siberia and the homesteaders near Yosemite. The only thing missing seems to be WWOOFers (Worldwide Organic Farm volunteers—of which Russia is conspicuously absent from their global directory.)
