Ты забыл, во что мы играли? (Have you forgotten what we used to play?) (2010)

I've never thought I'd post a review of a Russian movie here, but here it is. As the saying goes: never say never. Apparently, there are gems in this country's cinematography.

This film is about reminiscences of one's youth. One can recall precisely what has happened when they were young. One can come back to the place where this happened. In three years, or even in a decade later. However, one can never return exactly what has happened.

Why? There are many reasons. A "return" suggests that the person and the the things or people the person wants to return to have been separated, have evolved  independently for some time. On the material side of life, there's always a possibility to catch up - basically, just to accept the physical changes that took place in lives of the separated parties.

However, on "spiritual" level it's almost never possible to get in sync with a person or a thing left behind, abandoned for some significant period of time. This is because our mind is driven by our memory, the things that we learn interactively, the situations we happen to be involved in. Being separated, we face different challenges that prompt different reactions of our mind. One can hardly pass to another person all the cognitive experience they've gathered through their life. And as such we start to "think differently", to not understand each other.

Basically, this film teaches us to always keep up with people who we think we love or care about, be they our relatives, or friends, or whoever we think we want to be in touch with. Watch the movie with English hard-subs here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7g37N3eoQ9s):



Traditionally, there are actors who sort of overact, e.g. the house buyer, or the mother of the protagonist. I think that this kind of acting is exceptionally good for theater performances, but it simply doesn't suit movies well and rather ruins them. That's why I dislike Russian cinema in general. Other than that, the movie is a well-played classic coming of age drama.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2699212/
http://www.kinopoisk.ru/level/1/film/540824/ (in Russian)
http://video.finar.ru/ (official site of the movie in Russian with an option for Google Translate to English)
My vote: 7 of 10