KARLOVY VARY — Oleg cares. He really does. The Russian paramedic (played by Alexander Yatsenko) is passionate about taking care of his patients. When a new boss arrives to oversee the ambulance squad he’s a part of Oleg ignores the new rules because they impede his ability to help people whose lives are in mortal danger. While he’s focused on the job the question quickly turns to whether he’s also passionate about his marriage to his beautiful wife, Katya (Irina Gorbacheva), a doctor at a local hospital. At least that’s the somewhat familiar strained relationship scenario on the mind of director and co-screenwriter Boris Khlebnikov in his new film, “Arrhythmia,” which had its international premiere at the 2017 Karlovy Vary Film Festival on Saturday.
When we first meet Oleg he’s examining an older woman who insists she’s having heart troubles and already has her bags packed for the hospital. After playing a ruse on her that she’d need to shave her head if she wanted to be admitted due to “new regulations” he gives her a pill he claims has “nanotechnology” that will make her feel better in a few weeks. It’s a light-hearted and funny start for a movie that gets very serious very quickly.
Off the job Oleg is probably a borderline alcoholic. On their way to a birthday dinner for Katya’s father Oleg insists on stopping at a store to get more wine because he’s “been sober for 30 min.” During the festivities he makes a scene drowning down one glass of wine or vodka after another and so embarrasses Katya that she ends up texting him that she wants a divorce. At first Oleg thinks it’s a joke even when they return to their small apartment and she asks him to sleep in the kitchen while they supposedly both look for new places to live.
The film’s biggest problem is that beyond Oleg’s drinking and off-work partying (we assume he trying to drown the stress of his gig out of his system?) is that it’s never clear why Katya wants to take the seemingly out of the blue move of ending the marriage in the first place. At one point Oleg confronts her saying he’s sorry he’ll never make as much money as Katya and she must think he’s a “loser.” Katya looses it wondering how he could ever think she’d be so “materialistic” storming out of their car in the middle of a busy highway. Oleg is clearly reaching to understand why Katya is focused on divorce, but so is the audience. Again, his obvious alcohol issues could be justifiable except as the movie progresses Katya doesn’t seem to have that big an issue with it.
Where Khlebnikov and co-screenwriter Natalia Meshchaninova have more success is in chronicling Oleg’s on the job experiences. Oleg and his medical assistant (Nikolay Shrayber, solid) face more life and death calls than you can imagine in one film (the main reason for its unnecessary 116 min runtime). Khlebnikov handles these cases expertly, however, providing real drama and intrigue to the fate of people simply hoping someone can give them a helping hand whether that means a young girl who is unresponsive after being struck by an electoral wire or the victims of a knife fight still in progress when Oleg and his crew arrive. Where this storyline gets tiring is with Oleg and his colleagues battling those aforementioned new bureaucratic rules again and again. It’s an intentionally subtle criticism at the Russian government (hey, aren’t there always people at the top who impose dumb regulations?) and when Oleg’s boss gets so frustrated with him it comes to blows the whole conflict loses a bit of credibility.
Yatsenko and Gorbacheva are charismatic actors who make the marriage storyline watchable by sheer on screen chemistry. You just wish the material focused on their two characters had a bit more of a pulse. [C]