(A Driver for Vera) Reviewed
A scene from the movie with Vera and her father
A Driver for Very (Водитель для Веры) is a fine romantic drama from director Pavel Chukhraj. Set during the summertime on a secret Soviet naval base in the Crimea of the early 1960s, the movie uses the height of the Cold War and the Cuban Missile Crisis as the backdrop for its human drama. The heroes of this Russian movie are a Red Army general and a young soldier, and the villains are KGB agents.
The plot revolves around General Serov (Brogdan Stupka), who has a physically disabled and troubled daughter named Vera (Yelena Babenko). Vera walks with a noticeable limp but also drinks and smokes and wears glamorous clothes. When Viktor (Igor Petrenko), a young Red Army soldier, is recruited from the Kremlin Guards to work as the General's chaffeur, he is immediately attracted to Vera, in spite of the teasing advances of the General's pretty young maid Lida (Yekaterina Yudina, not so believable in this role).
Film poster for the movie
Lida is a tall blonde girl and full of herself, but Viktor slowly falls in love with Vera as he finds out her secret -- she is pregnant with the child of a Cuban officer (Dimitri Vysotsky). Vera's bedroom is full of Cuba-related memorabilia, including posters of Ernest Hemingway, dancers, and mambo records. Vera also likes to listen to American twist and bebop music while dancing alone around the room in her underwear.
When Viktor finds out that Vera intends to abort her baby, he fakes engine trouble with the car and tries to talk her out having an abortion. During this time, we find out at that Vera's mother has been confined to a work camp for political prisoners for an undisclosed offense against the state. Hoping to prevent a similar fate for his daughter, the General also tries to persuade her not to abort the baby and sends her on a short Black Sea yacht cruise with a visiting delegation of Cuban officers. Several Russian girls on the boat fancy the Cubans, but one pretty girl in particular stubbornly flirts with an uninterested Viktor, who only has eyes for Vera. When one of the Cubans stumbles below decks with the red-headed the girl to have sex with her, Vera slaps him, revealing that he is the father of her child.
Eventually, as a result of Viktor saving her from a suicide attempt, Vera chooses life, to the relief of her father. After Viktor brings Vera back to the villa, the General confronts him about whether or not he loves his daughter. In a frantic attempt to hide his love for Vera, Viktor forcefully seduces Lida, who later tries to make Vera jealous by disclosing that she slept with him.
The rivalry between the two women over the young Red Army soldier is interrupted by a fire at the general's villa. A plainclothes KGB military liason officer named Saveliev (Andrei Panin) has been watching every move made by the people in the General's household, and suspects him of disloyalty to the Communist Party. The fact that Panin's character turns out to be treacherous is no surprise to anyone who has seen the actor in Brigada, the RTR TV miniseries about the unlikely rise of an oligarch produced in 2002.
For whatever reason, in the film, the presence of the Cubans and their Russian offspring has become an embarassment to the KGB. When Saveliev cuts the brakes to the General's car, both the General and his young chaffeur are nearly killed when the vehicle careens off a cliff. After they barely survive the crash and are released from a military debriefing on the incident, the General drinks vodka with Viktor and confesses that he would be proud to have him as his son. Later that same night, Saveliev shows up at the villa with a KGB hit squad. The men torture and then strangle the General. When Vera arrives and realizes immediately that something is wrong, one of the KGB men shoots her in the head.
Viktor, who had stayed behind in the car with a couple of old lady informants that have been planted as domestics in the household by Saveliev, is forced to flee with Vera's baby. The young soldier uses all of his driving skills to try and shake Saveliev and his crew on the dark road at night. When Saveliev eventually catches up to Viktor at the base of a steep cliff, he pretends not to notice the young soldier and surprisingly, allows Viktor to escape with the crying baby. At daybreak, Viktor reaches Lida's house several miles away and leaves the baby with Lida, promising to return. Both of the ex-lovers know that they will likely never see eachother again. The film closes with a shot of Viktor standing on a cliff, pondering whether to jump, as Vera wanted to earlier to do in the movie.
Following its 2004 release, this movie won several awards across Russia, including Best Film at the Sochi Film Festival. The gorgeous cinemaphotography highlights the Crimea and Black Sea region, as well as its attractive young cast. The glamorous and athletic Yekaterina Yudina in particular is not very believable as a maid, but her character creates some tension between Vera and Viktor. The soundtrack also features Cuban music and Spanish lyrics from that time period (more recently, Gruz 200, a horror film set in 1984, features black and white Soviet filmreels of Cuban groups performing in the USSR being broadcast on state television).
Driver for Vera is an excellent Russian psychological drama. I would highly recommend ordering it through Amazon. Although an international version with subtitles exists, this film is currently not available via Netflix.
Charles Ganske is the co-founder and first fellow of the Real Russia Project and former editor in chief of Russia Blog.
