The relatively unheralded Russian film Simple Things is one of the happiest surprises of this year's Tribeca lineup. Written and directed by Alexi Popogresbsky, the film is a wry character study of an anesthetist--Sergei, played by Sergei Puskepalis--whose teenaged daughter has moved in with her boyfriend, giving Sergei and his beautiful wife a few extra inches of breathing space in their tiny apartment. Sergei is already struggling with the question of whether this is cause for celebration or a reason to despair when his wife informs him that she's pregnant again. Bewildered about where his life is going but pretty sure that he'd have trouble affording it no matter what, Sergei takes a job moonlighting for a shady company that supplies in-home painkilling services to the terminally ill. In turn, their clients agree to sign their apartments over to them after they die. He winds up making regular housecalls to an ancient actor (Leonid Bronevoy, who looks like a Slavic Jean Renoir), who offers him a bribe of a valuable painting in exchange for a lethal injection.
Simple Things is sweetly melancholy yet richly engaging; unforced and enjoyable, it seems to take its cues from Puskepalis, a theater director who's never had a prominent role in a movie before. He's in every scene, and you never get tired of watching him. He has a bracingly strong presence, and such audience rapport that the sight of him sitting around in his underwear with a milk mustache on his upper lip stops the movie cold. There's nothing boyish about him, as there is with most American actors, yet he's not overbearingly macho either. Much of the movie's appeal comes simply from watching this strong-looking, outsized figure try to come to grips, honestly and humorously, with the discovery that his life has taken an unhappy turn and he doesn't know hiow to fix it; he isn't even sure just why he's unhappy. People who see this movie now will have the special pleasure of getting to see a star being born.
