Elegiac Russian film looks at life in Chechnya

By Mike Collett-White

CANNES, France (Reuters) - In Alexander Sokurov's elegiac new film, an old woman visits her grandson serving in Russia's breakaway republic of Chechnya, and she quickly becomes a magnet for soldiers and locals worn down by years of conflict.

"Alexandra" is one of 22 films in the main competition at the Cannes Film Festival, and the audience at a press screening on Thursday warmly applauded its moving and understated examination of war, loss and friendship.

There are no bombs, no crazed militants and no troop brutality, but instead a slow-paced portrayal of life on a Russian army base and a market nearby where the lead character Alexandra strikes up an unlikely friendship.

A classical score underpins the action, set in the searing heat and dust and shot in muted colors. Sokurov went to Chechnya itself to film for 28 days in Grozny and in Khankala, despite the security risk posed by mines and ambushes.

Sokurov, regarded by many as one of Europe's great art house film makers, was not in Cannes due to poor health.

But in production notes issued to accompany the film, he explained how he avoided making an overtly political picture about Chechnya, scene of two recent brutal wars.

"Our film is a work of fiction, not a political act," he said, adding that he did not like traditional war movies.

"There is no poetry in war, no beauty, and it should never be filmed poetically: it is a horror that cannot be expressed, human degradation that cannot be expressed."

Sokurov also explained that although setting his narrative in Chechnya, the film was relevant everywhere.

"In this film we are talking about constants, and not only about Russian constants," he said.

"The heroine could be an American woman who has come to see her grandson in Iraq, or, say, an English woman who has gone to see her grandson in Afghanistan."

ANGEL IN THE DUST

Alexandra, played by Galina Vishnevskaya, provides a welcome antidote to the all-male society on the base.

Soldiers look on in amazement as she wanders, muttering, between canvas tents and through checkpoints, occasionally reaching out to touch her hand or share a joke with this reminder of a happier, more feminine world back home.

Her 27-year-old grandson is a respected Captain, but jaded by the horrors of battle. He braids Alexandra's hair and carries her down stairs with the tenderness of a lover.