Window to Paris

This free-to-view, Russian fantasy romcom is dark delight.

Do something different. Watch ‘Window to Paris’.

It’s a multi-genre movie shot in 1992, during the extreme hardship of the post-Soviet collapse.

Sergey Berezhnaya’s 1998 review was as philosophically fun and bleak as it was a statement of geopolitical realism:

Yeah, we're laughing. We laugh at our past. And the past is every bottle drunk and delivered. And every deceased secretary-general. And every new joyful idiocy. Windows to Europe open and close, as it always is for us.

Some Western reviewers slated it despite it being one of the best Russian movies of the year, and the most appropriate commentary on the era. However, SFGate got it right, and said that:

A wide-eyed Russian visiting Paris, for example, can't help but notice the huge number of churches in a city clearly infatuated with materialism. With boyish wonderment, he observes: "So many churches and yet they don't believe in God." It's an offhand remark, but one of many charged details scattered through the film's nutty story line.

The intro had me worried it was going to be a musical, but it wasn’t. Still, it took me a while to get into it, but suddenly I was romping like Nellie the Elephant!

Watch it on YouTube below, or on Russia’s OK website.

I wish there were 2024 windows from London to Moscow, and New York to Gaza City, and always from Knysna to me.

NB: I’m slowly working through promises to subscribers, but was foolish in not adding your names to my bookmarks. Thank you to the lady who recommended this over a month ago!