Juho Kuosmanen, the Finnish director of Compartment No. 6, has said of his own films: “Basically, they are boring.” And it’s true that nothing much happens in this one, said Deborah Ross in The Spectator. It is set over the course of a long train journey across Russia in 1998. Seidi Haarla plays Laura, a Finnish archaeology student who’s travelling to Murmansk in the north of the country to see some Stone Age rock carvings.
On boarding the train, she’s dismayed to learn she’s sharing her sleeper carriage with a “bullet-headed, tough-looking, chain-smoking, vodka-glugging Russian man”, Ljoha (Yuriy Borisov), who is drunk and grabs at her crotch. It seems there’s “no way this pair are going to connect” – but gradually they do. This is a “character-as-plot film, and if that isn’t your style it is going to feel like a very long journey indeed”. It didn’t to me, though. “It seemed worthwhile.”
Compartment No. 6 has a lovely visual “texture”, said Tim Robey in The Daily Telegraph. But it’s the “rapport between the actors – or the anti-rapport, to start with” – that makes it so enjoyable. Haarla plays Laura with great vulnerability, while Borisov presents “such a vivid portrait of inarticulate male neurosis, hiding behind an armour of pathetic misogyny, that we even grow oddly protective of him, too”.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
The film was mostly shot “within the confines of a real Russian train”, said Mark Kermode in The Observer, and it captures the setting “brilliantly”. As for any wider message, its “central theme of overcoming otherness and finding common ground across personal, cultural and geographical borders seems like a balm for the soul in these tumultuous times”.
-
Quiz of The Week: 6 – 12 SeptemberQuiz Have you been paying attention to The Week's news?
-
The week’s best photosIn Pictures A palace on fire, a shopping cart protest, and more
-
The Week Unwrapped: Why is horse-racing going on strike?Podcast Plus, will the South Korean women who worked in state-run brothels set up for US soldiers succeed? And what’s behind a surge in leg-lengthening surgery?
-
Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale – a ‘comfort’ watch for fansThe Week Recommends The final film of the franchise gives viewers a chance to say goodbye
-
The Paper: new show, same 'warmth and goofiness'The Week Recommends This spin-off of the American version of The Office is ‘comfortingly and wearyingly familiar’
-
Rachel Jones: Gated Canyons – ‘riotously colourful’ works from an ‘exhilarating’ painterThe Week Recommends The 34-year-old is the first artist to take over Dulwich Picture Gallery’s main space
-
Born With Teeth: ‘mischievously provocative’ play starring Ncuti GatwaThe Week Recommends ‘Sprightly’ production from Liz Duffy Adams imagines the relationship between Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe
-
Art review: Lorna Simpson: Source NotesFeature Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, through Nov. 2
-
Jessica Francis Kane's 6 favorite books that prove less is moreFeature The author recommends works by Penelope Fitzgerald, Marie-Helene Bertino, and more
-
Book reviews: 'Baldwin: A Love Story' and 'The Fort Bragg Cartel: Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special Forces'Feature A loving James Baldwin biography and the drug crimes of two special ops veterans
-
Rigatoni with 'no-vodka sauce' recipeThe Week Recommends Comfort food meets a clever alcohol-free twist on a classic
