Lots and lots of brocade - and blood. Though not at the same time.

[oneiriad]

For inexplicable reasons the two movies that sounded most interesting at CIFF were both Russian. At somewhat inconvenient times, but I'll manage.

So, yesterday I went to see The Sovereign's Servant. It's about a couple of French courtiers, who manage to anger the French King in the year 1709 (there is something about a duel and the King's mistress), and since a convenient war between Sweden and Russia is about to hit boiling point, they are sent into exile, one to each of the warring kings, to act as observers. They are given despatches to the kings, neither of them aware that they contain a request to send the bearer off to die in battle (reminding me of Hamlet...)

It's a fairly entertaining movie - men in huge wigs and lots of gilt and brocade (lots and lots of brocade!), soldiers in uniforms in all the colours of the rainbow, dramatic sword fights, ships (rather random and I am willing to bet one of them was Shtandart, the ship that was at Baltic Sail a few years ago), even a bit of a slashy vibe between the nice guy exiled and the Russian officer he gains as a companion (or maybe I'm just over-interpreting the naked-men-in-sauna scene ;-). Anyway, it's practically worth seeing for the costumes alone, but a word of warning: it's bloody. There is shooting and hanging, pillaging and plundering and raping and lots and lots of carnage. But still, pretty good.

There was just one thing that annoyed me. So, it's a Russian movie. Fine. It had English subtitles - the most clumsy English subtitles I've ever seen, but mostly you could easily enough figure out what they meant. Fine. The actors were Russian, but when they played French or Swedish or Polish or whatever people, they spoke the relevant languages. Also fine. But when they did, there was a very irritating voice-over in Russian! Seriously, couldn't they just use subtitles or do it like the American movies where everybody speaks English with a bad accent? It was particualrly annoying because it makes the scenes where people don't understand each other (which are plentiful) pretty confusing, since everything is spoken in Russian...

Still, a good movie. And on Saturday (technically Sunday) I'll finally get to see Day Watch :-)