Intergirl

Intergirl
Directed by	Pyotr Todorovsky
Produced by	Mira Todorovskaya[1]
Written by	Vladimir Kunin
Starring	Elena Yakovleva; Vsevolod Shilovsky; Zinovy Gerdt; Lyubov Polishchuk; Ingeborga Dapkunaite; Larisa Malevannaya; Anastasiya Nemolyaeva
Music by	Pyotr Todorovsky; Igor Kantyukov
Cinematography	Valery Shuvalov
Edited by	Irina Kolotikova
Distributed by	Mosfilm
Release date	1989;
Running time	143 minutes
Country	Soviet Union
Language	Russian

Intergirl (Russian: Интердевочка, translit. Interdevochka) is a 1989 Soviet drama film. Set in Leningrad (Saint Petersburg) in the time of perestroika during the 1980s. The film was the most popular Soviet film in 1989 (41.3 million viewers) and made a star of leading actress Elena Yakovleva.

It is the screen adaptation of the eponymous story by Vladimir Kunin[2].

Plot

Tanya Zaitseva from Leningrad, a nurse by day and a prostitute catering to foreigners by night, suddenly receives a marriage proposal from a Swedish client [3][4]. After another altercation with the police she goes home to share good news with her mother, who thinks that her daughter is just a nurse. Tanya does not hide the fact that she is getting married not for love, but because she wants to have an apartment, a car, money and dreams "to see the world with my own eyes." In a conversation with her mother she argues that prostitution is characteristic of all trades, "all sell themselves." However, the mother can not even imagine that Tatiana sells herself in the truest sense of the word.

Tanya's former client and now fiancé, Ed Larsen (in the book Edward Larsen), is a pass for Tanya to the Western world of dreams. However, the Soviet bureaucracy gets in the way: there are some requirements to get a visa to Sweden. She needs to receive a permission for immigration from her father, whom she has not seen for 20 years. He requires 3,000 rubles in exchange for the paperwork - a lot of money those days. Tanya has to re-engage in prostitution to get the money.

Sweden very quickly bores the heroine. She makes friends with a Russian truck driver working for "Sovtransavto", through whom she sends gifts to her mother in Leningrad. Her Swedish "friends" never forget how Tanya earned in the USSR. Ed really loves his wife, but always makes comments about her habits. Tanya is an alien in a foreign world. She is homesick and wants to visit her mother. Meanwhile, Tanya's prostitute friend mentions during a conversation over the phone that they opened case on "illegal foreign currency speculation" on Tanya (for illegal currency transactions was another article, with very strict sanctions). Investigators come to Tanya's mother and reveal the secrets of her daughter's high earnings. Shocked and morally broken by this, Tanya's mother commits suicide by gassing herself to death in her apartment. Skein, a neighbor of Tanya, smells gas at the apartment and bursts in, knocking out the window. She pulls her out from the apartment and tries to revive her, but to no avail. She knocking on the neighbors' doors for help. At this moment in Sweden, Tanya looks back and her intuition tells her that something bad has happened. In panic, she abandoned her lover, jumps into the car and starts driving to the airport and gets killed in car accident[4]. The drama of the final episode is reinforced by the Russian folk song "Tramp" ("In the wild steppes of Transbaikalia ..."), which is the leitmotif of the film.

Cast

Elena Yakovleva as Tanya Zaytseva
Tomas Laustiola as Edvard Larsen, Tanya Zaytseva's husband (voice by Aleksandr Belyavsky)
Larisa Malevannaya as Alla Sergeyevna Zaytseva, Tanya's mother
Anastasiya Nemolyaeva as Lyalya, nurse, Tanya's friend
Ingeborga Dapkūnaitė as Kisulya, prostitute
Lyubov Polishchuk as Zina Meleyko, prostitute
Irina Rozanova as Sima Gulliver, prostitute
Natalia Shchukina as Natalya «Schoolgirl», prostitute
Martinsh Vilsons as Victor, trucker
Vsevolod Shilovsky as Nikolay Platonovich Zaytsev, Tanya's father
Zinovy Gerdt as Boris Semenovich, chief medical officer
Valeriy Khromushkin as Volodya, union organizer of hospital
Maria Vinogradova as Sergeevna, nurse
Igor Vetrov as Anatoliy A. Kudryavtsev, police captain
Gennady Sidorov as Zhenya, police lieutenant
Tatyana Agafonova as Verka, former Moscow prostitute living in Sweden
Torsten Wahlund as Gunvald, Edvard Larsen's co-worker
Sergey Bekhterev as waiter
Anna Frolovtseva as FRRO employee
Mintai Utepbergenov as Japanese businessman (voice by Aleksei Zolotnitsky)
Igor Efimov as hotel janitor

Awards

3 wins and 1 nomination. Elena Yakovleva has won the Best Actress award at Nika, 1990, and Tokyo International Film Festival, 1989.

References

Мира Тодоровская: рождение профессии кинопродюсер /
Andrew Horton, Michael Brashinsky (1992). The Zero Hour: Glasnost and Soviet Cinema in Transition. Princeton University Press. p. 118. ISBN 9780691019208.
Andrew Colin Gow (2007). Hyphenated Histories: Articulations of Central European and Slavic Studies in the Contemporary Academy. BRILL. p. 114. ISBN 9789047422679.
D. Berghahn, C. Sternberg (2010). European Cinema in Motion: Migrant and Diasporic Film in Contemporary Europe. Springer. p. 102. ISBN 9780230295070.

External links

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[svoboda1-1] Мира Тодоровская: рождение профессии кинопродюсер /

[Horton-2] Andrew Horton, Michael Brashinsky (1992). The Zero Hour: Glasnost and Soviet Cinema in Transition. Princeton University Press. p. 118. ISBN 9780691019208.

[Gow-3] Andrew Colin Gow (2007). Hyphenated Histories: Articulations of Central European and Slavic Studies in the Contemporary Academy. BRILL. p. 114. ISBN 9789047422679.

[Berghahn-4] D. Berghahn, C. Sternberg (2010). European Cinema in Motion: Migrant and Diasporic Film in Contemporary Europe. Springer. p. 102. ISBN 9780230295070.