Astenicheskiy sindrom

ASTENICHESKIY SINDROM consists of two parts, one a film-in-a-film in black and white, the other in color. In the first, a woman has a mental breakdown due to the death of her husband and radically refuses to follow any sort of social convention as a result. In the second, a young teacher succumbs to asthenic syndrome: he meets life’s impositions by falling into a deep sleep, even in the most impossible of situations. Life in THE ASTHENIC SYNDROME is a feverish nightmare in which there are no more bonds and connections of any kind, in which a whole society sways back and forth between insanity and apathy. The external breakdown of the Soviet Union is mirrored at an internal level by desperate, senseless outbursts of violence. Almost in passing, any belief in the transformative power of art is also rebuffed with mocking irony. This “exuberant perversion of the cinematic conventions of social realism” (Andrei Plakhov) became the only Soviet film to be banned during the Perestroika. (al)