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Come Look at Me

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I was surprised this film dated from 2001, as it had the look and feel of a late Soviet film.  It is a wonderful character study set during the holiday season, with a lonely woman bringing home a total stranger as her boyfriend to try to cheer her ailing mother.  The film floats in a kind of "magical realism" without pandering to the audience like the more recent Yolki films.  Oleg Yankovsky is in fine form as the dashing stranger and  Irina Kupchenko is wonderful as the melancholy Tatyana.  Yekaterina Vasilyeva and Natalya Shchukina round out the intimate cast.

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