Brief Encounters

The great Ukrainian director Kira Muratova made her debut with this sublime romantic drama in 1967 though it was banned by Soviet censors for twenty years. Nadia travels to the big city and gets a job in a cafe. There she meets and falls in love with the geologist Maxim (played by Vladimir Vysotsky, a famous Russian singer songwriter). Maxim’s wife Valentina hires Nadia as a maid when Maxim is away on a geological expedition, unaware of the connection with her husband. Muratova explores unconventional narrative techniques to create a hypnotic dramatisation of intimacy and longing.

Acting is a combination of discipline and freedom. For instance, the girl who plays the friend of the heroine in Brief Encounters was a tremendous discovery for me. In The Long Farewell she plays the pregnant daughter of a post office employee. She’s enormously talented - not because of her education, it’s innate. All her lines in Brief Encounters are scripted and she performs them exactly right. She learned the text by heart but performed it as though she had invented it on the spot. That’s professionalism. Sudden bright ideas that cannot be repeated mark the amateur. You should be able to say to the actor: repeat this but do it a little more softly and add this movement. She was able to repeat a piece with the same natural quality as the first time, while simultaneously making small alterations.

Director Kira Muratova from an interview by Mart Dominicus and Mark-Paul Meyer, 1988. Translated by Veva Leye