In a politically loaded gesture, the Venice Film Festival programmed the premieres of Valentyn Vasyanovych’s Reflection and Captain Volkonogov Escaped by Natasha Merkulova and Aleksey Chupov on consecutive days. The former Ukrainian and the latter Russian, both these competition entries contain significant scenes of torture by Russian officers and there’s no misreading the films’ implied message. Actually, in the case of Reflection, you can hardly speak of implying – films don’t get much blunter. There’s little room for subtlety in the tableau aesthetic that Vasyanovych has now used, with minimal variation, in at least three successive features. Always working as […]