Babnik, directed by Alejandro Adams, written and produced by Adams and Marya Murphy, unfolds like an elaborate piece of origami with a bomb hidden in the center. We know the bomb is ticking, but Adams makes us spread open every last crease before it explodes.
Set in the Bay Area expat Russian community, the story revolves around a pair of slick characters named Sasha and Misha who run what appears to be a modelling agency but is actually a front for darker enterprises. Girls turn up looking for work or seeking refuge from failed mail-order marriages. In an exquisite character introduction, Misha delivers an identical seductive spiel to a succession of identical babes in tight black minidresses, as cameras flash in the background. He praises their physical attributes in honeyed tones while encouraging them to invest in expensive vitamin and skincare regimens, conveniently stocked by the agency and guaranteed--as we divine by the scene's end--to indebt the girls enough to eventually coerce them into porn and prostitution.
Hapless telemarketer Artem is fired. His emasculating wife, Yelena, expects a certain standard of living; if Artem cannot provide it, she will leave him. Hoping to raise funds, he joins a high-stakes gambling group run by Sasha and Misha, but he only succeeds in becoming deeply financially obligated to them.
Concurrently, volatile Arseniy makes life hell for his teenaged sister, Nika. She can't do anything right for him. At one point, he berates her for typing too loudly while he's trying to rest. When she closes her door so he won't hear, he screams at her for doing so.
Yelena wants money, Nika wants out from under Arseniy's thumb, and Sasha and Misha want whatever will further their business ventures. An elaborate setup, with Artem as the fall guy, allows them all a chance to achieve their goals. And Artem is in no position to argue. In one long take, Sasha and Misha explain to him what he must do. The camera never moves from their adamant faces, as they goad him with repeated exhortations of "Look at me, Artem" and "Pay attention, Artem." When Adams finally cuts to Artem's reaction, he is nearly in tears, utterly and fatally trapped.
This is a story about control. Perception of power in any given scene shifts from character to character, as if driven by a hyperactive focus servo. At first glance, one is tempted to accuse Adams of playing it easy on the men. Ultimately, only Sasha and Misha go unchallenged for dominance. And in this world, a woman's only means of achieving power over men is through sex or death; there is no middle ground between these extremes. Misha's head girl schools a new recruit, using a porno as a textbook. "That hurts at first, but don't be afraid to try it. It will melt any man," she says. Then she nimbly shifts to instructing Artem in how to kidnap a young girl, while the porn plays on in the background. But, as we eventually learn, the suffering endemic to the sex trade is equal-opportunity. And the final and lingering image of Nika, paid off by Misha for her part in the plot and having refused a ride into town, stalking fearlessly alone down a rural road, suggests that the playing field has just become incrementally more level. Nika is, in her quiet and expressionless way, a force to be reckoned with. She deserves her own sequel.
If there is any flaw, it is that the pieces of the plot fall into place just a little too conveniently at the climax. Arseniy does exactly what Sasha and Misha expect him to at exactly the right time. One wonders what would have happened if he hadn't--a definite possibility, given that he is not only volatile but also intensely self-interested. How would Sasha and Misha have gotten Artem out of the way? And under what pretext could they have delivered Arseniy to his eventual fate? The filmmakers clearly place great value on realism, but at this one small yet vital point in the plot, they appear to reject it.
Babnik remains, however, a masterful mood piece, beautifully executed. The throbbing electronic pulse of a score builds tension and suspense. The story is punctuated by scenes in untranslated Russian or lengthy silences in which only enigmatic glances move the action forward. And move it they do. The actors--professional and amateur alike--are wonderful to watch. There are no caricatures in this film. The bad guys hang at their suburban house or cruise in their SUV like ordinary people, laughing and joking with the few girls who have not only survived the business but mastered their part in it. Occasional sudden moments of casual violence are often all that remind us of the criminal undercurrents roiling beneath the surface.
The rhythm of the film is the rhythm of sex. A seemingly interminable build, by the end of which the tension reaches an almost unbearable peak, is followed by an explosive crescendo. Then the filmmakers roll over and go to sleep while we sit in the dark, limp and drained, considering the implications and wondering whether to get up and leave or linger until morning. Any theatre that screens Babnik should hand out Ziganovs at the door.
