Natasha doesn't have any joy in her life. There is nothing remarkable about her. She’s in her 50s and works as a clerk at a provincial zoo in a small, dismal town. Her colleagues treat her like dirt. Men don't give her a second glance. Except for her conservative, religious mother, she is alone. And then something changes: she grows a tail. It's quite long, though not too long to hide away beneath her clothes. Still, she really can't ignore it.
Played straight, Ivan Tverdovsky's bold second feature is a surreal comedy, a fetishistic love story, and, one assumes, an allegory for the repression of LGBT rights in Putin's Russia. Certainly the Orthodox Church bears the brunt of Tverdovsky's satire. But it's Natalia Pavlenkova's wonderful, multilayered performance as Natasha that carries the movie's emotional line.
Director’s Biography
Ivan Tverdovsky: Born in 1988 in Moscow, Ivan Tverdovsky graduated from the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography. His short and feature documentaries garnered awards at many festivals. He curates short Russian films for the Moscow Film Festival. The prize-winning Corrections Class ('14), inspired by the novel by psychologist Ekaterina Murashova, marked his feature debut.
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