COMPARTMENT NO. 6
★★★★
OUT 8 APRIL / CERT TBC / 107 MINS
DIRECTOR Juho Kuosmanen
CAST Seidi Haarla, Yuriy Borisov
A love story between strangers on a train: you can hear the comparisons to Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy before it’s even left the station. But there is very little cute about this meet cute, and far less erudite repartee than in Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise. In the ’90s, Finnish student Laura (Seidi Haarla) shares a compartment with vulgar Russian skinhead Ljoha (Yuriy Borisov); their first encounter is blunt and offensive (he asks her if she’s a sex worker, she teaches him the Finnish for “Go fuck yourself”). But a mutual respect and even love blossoms. Juho Kuosmanen’s direction is naturalistic and artful, making atmospheric use of the Russian winter setting, but this is as much a romance in the old-school Hollywood tradition — opposites, inevitably, still attract.