Oksana Akinshina stars as one of a wild group of Russian hipsters not afraid to stare into the face of communism and dance
HIPSTERS (STILYAG) (Valery Todorovsky, 2008)
Cinema Village
22 East 12th St. between University Pl. & Fifth Ave.
Opens Friday, February 24
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Shortly after the death of Stalin in 1953, groups of Soviet youth decided to rebel against the boring gray conformity of Russian existence and instead celebrate American hipster culture, dressing in colorful clothing, wearing slick pompadours, and meeting in secret locations along “Broadway” where they would dance wildly to jazz and swing. A sort of Eastern European version of Footloose, Valery Todorovsky’s Hipsters follows the story of Mels (Anton Shagin), a member of the Kmsomol, a uniformed youth organization whose main goal is to destroy the hipsters, known as stilyagi in Russian. But when Mels — whose name is an acronym for Marx/Engels/Lenin/Stalin — confronts the beautiful hipster Polly (Oksana Akinshina), he instantly falls madly in love with her. Shortening his name to the more American Mel, he joins up with the hipsters, even learning to play the saxophone as he woos Polly and battles with Katya (Evgenia Brik), the Kmsomol leader who now considers him to be a traitor. Winner of the Best Picture Nika, the Russian equivalent of the Oscars, Hipsters suffers from a standard, predictable story line, but despite frustrating cliché after frustrating cliché, it starts to grow on you, particularly the musical numbers that take place in regular society, not at the underground parties, which are obvious and overdone. And Akinshina is mesmerizing to watch as Polly, a strong young woman not afraid to spit in the face of life-draining communism. In making the first Russian musical in several generations, Todorovsky (The Lover, Vice) combined 1950s American jazz with 1980s Russian Perestroika rock, giving the film a fresh yet retro feel. Despite a whole lot of silliness and a desperate need to be hip itself, Hipsters is a cold war musical not without a little warmth.