Based in the Dostoevsky’s short story of the same title, Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa portraits contemporary Russia as a corrupted and dehumanised society on his third feature, ‘A Gentle Creature,’ telling the ordeal of an ordinary woman living in a small village whom, after a parcel sent to her jailed husband gets returned for no apparent reason and failing to gather any further information, embarks on a journey to the prison where her partner is held.
Her allegorical journey, a labyrinthine descent into social and bureaucratic hell in which she will experience a cycle of abuse and degradation from the shady characters she encounters in her way, paint a grim picture of the moral decay of the country. Lead star Vasilina Mokovtseva gives a remarkably restrained performance focused on the stoicism of her character, who impassibly endures the humiliations thrown at every step of her search for the whereabouts of her husband, passively letting herself being pushed around.