KARLOVY VARY – Films depicting the political and societal corruption in modern day Russian have become almost commonplace this decade. It’s almost rare to find a major filmmaker not commenting on it in some aspect. Even Kirill Serebrennikov, who has been under house arrest since October, found a way to comment in his 80’s period piece “Leto,” which debuted at Cannes in May. Now, Ivan I. Tverdovsky, who had a strong sophomore effort with the subversive “Zoology” two years ago, returns with perhaps the most blatant example of everyday Russian corruption yet, “Jumpman.”
READ MORE: ‘Zoology’ is much more than the ‘Woman with a Tail’ movie [Review]
The winner of a special Jury Mention at the 2018 Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, “Jumpman” begins with a young Oksana (Anna Slyu, memorable) dropping her baby off at a boy’s orphanage, seemingly unable to raise him on her own. 16 years later we meet her grownup offspring, Denis (Denis Vlasenko, major star potential), who is participating in a game with other boys at the facility. He’s first wrapped in a large black hose around him and two other students then try to squeeze him like a game of tug-of-war to see how long he can go before he collapses. It’s not clear why Denis participates in this game, but he’s clearly better at it than his peers who marvel at his ability to handle the pain.
Before you can bat an eye, Oksana is back at the facility trying to gain custody of Denis even though the facility administrator is skeptical. Tverdovsky plays with viewer’s emotions here by having you root for Oksnana and Denis to escape the institution while, in hindsight, the administrators concerns will later turn out to be beyond reproach. How Oksana is living is always a bit unclear as is her often eyebrow raising psychological state. She has a gorgeous apartment in a nearby, unnamed city and insists that both she and Denis only walk around the dwelling in their underwear (The excuse? Their clothes would get dirt on everything). She flirts with her son in a more sexual explicit manner than even Denis realizes (he’s just thrilled to be with her) and keeps feeding him one glass of wine after another. And if anything happens it happens off screen without being mentioned, but the director certainly wants you to imagine something is going down.
Tverdovsky keeps things moving, however, by quickly having Oksana introduce Denis to her social circle who, it turns out, are somehow a who’s who of the city’s judicial framework (why she would actually know them is never revealed). There’s the prosecutor and public defense attorney who are a drop-dead gorgeous couple, the policeman (Daniil Steklov) whose mother conveniently is a doctor in the nearby hospital emergency room (“Zoology’s” Natalya Pavlenkova) and the local judge who is turning a blind eye to this lucrative scam whenever she can. A scam, mind you, that Denis begins to play a crucial role in.
Working with the increasingly off-kilter officer, Denis is part of a number of elaborate and intentional car accidents where the policeman will scope out a rich target and communicate the location to our intended victim. The teen will wait for the automobile to come by and then jump in front of it, getting hit, breaking the windshield, flipping over onto the ground and then find himself rushed to the hospital (often in front of third party witnesses). Denis somehow knows how to pull this off without getting seriously hurt and his pain threshold that was demonstrated earlier in the film certainly insists him in this madness. Denis never last long at the hospital as the E.R. doctor dismisses him after writing up a forged medical report indicating significant injuries and a long hospital stay. That’s where things get slightly more devilish.
When a victim of the scam refuses to pay a settlement the entire group work together to frame him/her and send them to jail. Tverdovsky depicts the defense attorney ignoring their clients please to even question any of the witnesses, including Denis whose memorizes retelling the nights events are key for the prosecution. The audience witnesses a number of these courtroom cases that at first are disheartening and then increasingly unbelievable, even for a small urban enclave such as this. Too many holes in the scenario begin to come to the surface even though the movie wants to make a telling point about the nation. And when Denis starts to question where this life will take him the movie immediately loses much of its dramatic tension.
Obviously, Tverdovsky wants the audience to be appalled by the rampant corruption, but the tone in which he stages these trials starts to become comedic which only hurts his cause. True, these are the moments when you’re reminded this is the same visionary filmmaker behind “Zoology” except there is a casualness to it that simply feels wrong here (it borders on comedic farce). The idea of making the cases seem like everyday events isn’t a bad idea. What you can question is how staging them in such a manner dilutes the film’s overall message.
If there is one bright spot of “Jumpman,” thankfully, is Vlasenko. Making his feature film debut, the Russian native is captivating and he often carries much of the film. And if he can speak English? You might see him appearing in a project on this side of the Atlantic sooner than you might think. [Grade: C+]