Prix du meilleur film, du meilleur scénario et du meilleur rôle masculin (Konstantin Khabenski) au Festival "Kinotavr", 2005
Bélier d'or de la meilleure réalisation, 2005
Bélier d'or du meilleur scénario, 2005
[...]As the Russian title (literally, “poor relatives”) of Lungin’s film suggests, the story concerns the encounters between poor and wealthy relatives. The film’s irony in part relies on the deconstruction of the term “poor relatives” with its loaded cultural meaning. Neither the new configuration of the relationship, nor the film’s humor exhibit any real depth. Traditionally, of course, the poor relatives journey to find their wealthy uncles and aunts, who would often take in their less fortunate kin as servants. The film treats this event in its more contemporary manifestation: wealthy and middle-class émigrés who have made it in the new lands (the Americas, Israel) return to the homeland, to the roots from which they were severed. The implicit motivation for their return is the search for spiritual nourishment, and so the émigrés sacrifice the material comforts of their villas and Western civilization to journey to their ancestral past, the timeless village of Golotvin. They believe that here they will be able to complete themselves by reconnecting with their heritage. All for the nominal fee of…[...]
Michelle Kuhn, kinokultura.com
