Missing Persons

DEAR COMRADES (B+) - Andrey Konchalovskiy goes back to 1962 for this stiff but effective Soviet drama revolving around the massacre of civilians protesting price hikes and wage cuts in the small industrial town of Novocherkassk. Yuliya Vysotskaya is a tour de force as Lyuda, a devoted local Communist Party apparatchik who turns doubtful and distraught after her daughter goes missing in the scrum.

Konchalovskiy shoots in crisp black and white to give this a period feeling, and he gruffs up his extras to create that working-class smudge about them. Vysotskaya takes her character on an emotionally wrenching journey, from a kittenish wake-up scene with her married lover (who is a party colleague) to the disorientation of the growing anger of the mob to, finally, the anguish of fearing the worst for her daughter.

The residents' struggles with the Soviet Union are filtered through personal experience, such as the dynamic between Lyuda, who waxes nostalgic for the Stalin era, and her grumpy father, who is old enough to remember the relative luxury of the tsarist days. Lyuda and Loginov (Vladislov Komarov), a KGB agent she latches on to as an aid to tracking down her daughter, sing patriotic songs in the car, less as a celebration and more as a numbing balm for their wavering devotion. The suspense builds in the second half as Lyuda tries to reconcile her own action as a widget in the system with the pain inflicted on those around her. 

YOURSELF AND YOURS (D+) - This is a trivial, confusing and lightweight -- er, comedy? -- introducing us to the films of Sang-soo Hong, and we hope it is not representative of his overall work (which also includes "Right Now, Wrong Then"). As it glides by in 86 minutes, you wait for it to stop spinning its wheels and get to the point; it never does.

Min-jung (Yoo-Young Lee) is a hard drinker, which gets in the way of her relationship with a painter, Young-soo (Ju-hyuk Kim), and when he gives her the ultimatum -- the bottle or me -- she politely leaves. She then apparently reinvents herself, denying to those who have met her before that she is Min-jung, at one point claiming for the first time that she has a twin sister.

None of this is convincing. The trailer for the film hints at a charming relationship film with splashes of whimsy. Instead, this is a slog, with repetitive dialogue, twisted logic and dull performances and set pieces. It's not possible to figure this one out, and maybe that's the point. It's as if Hong workshopped an idea, captured it on film, and instead of writing a script from it, just released these outtakes. A real chore to watch.