Khabensky's stunning performance in 'Yura Was Here'

On 5 February, the film «Yura Was Here» (18+) hits theaters. Its main character is an adult man with mental disabilities who cannot speak and behaves like a small child. A journalist from 59.RU has already seen the film. Below — her first-person impressions.

The film tells the story of two young musicians, Oleg and Sergei, living in a rented communal apartment. One of their mothers asks the guys to take Oleg«s uncle Yura in for a while and look after him. The man cannot be left alone due to his helplessness.

From the very first minutes, the viewer gets the impression that they themselves are in the frame and living together with the characters in their dilapidated communal apartment. The camera moves behind the characters« backs, then switches to their faces and shows them in close-up, not in the format of a perfectly composed shot, but as if randomly snatched. Many scenes are shot not from a tripod, but «handheld», so the viewer never loses the feeling of immediacy.

At a meeting with Perm residents after the premiere, director Sergey Malkin admitted his interest in documentary filmmaking, which he had been involved in since his college days. Cinematographer Filipp Zadorozhny, who worked on the film, also shot documentaries, and his interest in live footage is felt throughout the film.

The main character — Uncle Yura — does not appear immediately in the film. According to the plot, the young people come to get him from a police station, where he ended up by mistake with his tipsy brother.

I did not immediately recognize Konstantin Khabensky as the main character, so different is he in this film. Partly due to makeup, partly due to the characteristic movements of people with mental disabilities, which he adopted. The actor immersed himself in the character so deeply that even you, a person in the audience, involuntarily want to hand him the TV remote and help him open the door.

At first, the friends cautiously accept the new adult companion into their group. They do not know how to behave with him, how to explain basic household things, but later their relationship becomes more natural, they begin to feel him as a friend and even throw Yura a modest birthday party.

To avoid leaving Uncle Yura alone, they take him everywhere with them, even to interviews and their own concert. During the performance, when the guys are on stage, Yura leaves the club and gets lost. Oleg rushes to search for him. He finds his uncle, huddled and hiding behind a trash bin. At that moment, you almost physically feel Yura«s fear of this loud and incomprehensible world.

After this comes a touching scene where Oleg tries to warm and calm his uncle by drawing him a warm bath and sitting him in it. In the naked, hunched figure, the helplessness of a child inside an adult body is especially evident. He shakes and cannot get warm, and you shake along with him. This is one of the most powerful scenes in the film. I believe it takes great acting courage to not be afraid to play such a character — ugly on the outside, strange and ridiculous.

The young musician friends are brilliantly played by Denis Paramonov and Kuzma Kotrelev. The friends« relationships are touching and sincere, and the dialogues are spontaneous and lively. The characters are easygoing friends — even if they quarrel, they immediately laugh and become thick as thieves again. Against the backdrop of the old dilapidated communal apartment, their friendship seems like a true value, filled with light.

This film is just about an episode, a snippet from the lives of young people. But it is during this time spent with Yura that something changes in them. As if they begin to see the world through his eyes — slow, captivating with beauty, love, and light.