Catching Up With the Past

It was a cross between Billy Wilder's "The Apartment" and "Bridget Jones's Diary" with plenty of Soviet grayness thrown in. A drunken Moscow doctor woke up in an airport and took a taxi to an apartment identical to his own -- the same proletarian street name, the same porch, the same doorlock, the same closets -- but, as it took him 50 minutes of screen time to realize, the apartment was in Leningrad, and its owner was a willowy blonde with relationship issues.

Eldar Ryazanov's 1975 television film "Irony of Fate" struck such a chord with viewers that it has been aired every New Year's holiday since its premiere. Running more than three hours, the film stars a Polish actress whose husky accent had to be dubbed into Russian and is set almost entirely in a drab apartment with a limp New Year's tree and a pullout bed. But somehow the chemistry between the leads and the quietly witty script -- not to mention the songs performed by budding star Alla Pugachyova -- leave viewers echoing the hero's words that "I've got the feeling that during this night, we have lived a whole life."

This year, Channel One director Konstanin Ernst and "Night Watch" director Timur Bekmambetov got together to do the unthinkable: make a sequel to "Irony of Fate," which ended with the 30-something hero and heroine apparently set for wedded bliss. The new film, which came out Dec. 21 in an unprecedented number of copies, has prompted a squall of negative reviews from outraged critics.

"An attempt to revive a legend resulted in a wax-work museum," Rossiiskaya Gazeta wrote of the film. "The second 'Irony' differs from the first one as much as the rotten dank weather outside differs from a frosty, fresh December with powdery snow," Izvestia sniffed. Kommersant Weekend disagreed, however, writing that the film's producers "found a way to combine the old and new without being irritating."

The film, titled "Irony of Fate: Continuation," has been released in 1,050 copies in Russia, the CIS and the Baltics, the director of distributors, 20th Century Fox CIS/Gemini, Michael Schlicht, said at a news conference before the premiere. In an innovative marketing tactic, viewers who booked tickets before Dec. 22 could enter a lottery to win an apartment in St. Petersburg or a car. As a result, more than 140,000 people had already bought tickets two days before the premiere, Schlicht said. What's more, the film's makers promise that it won't be shown on television for two years.

Over the first weekend, the film made more than $9 million, RIA Novosti reported Wednesday. The film was made on a budget of around $5 million, excluding postproduction and promotion costs, Ernst said at the news conference. The film has been given free coverage on news broadcasts on Channel One; it is also being advertised on televisions in marshrutka taxis and on street billboards.

Channel One The new film version stars Konstantin Khabensky, pictured on the cover and with Liza Boyarskaya.

In the new film, it turns out that the original hero and heroine, Zhenya and Nadya, didn't live happily ever after. The heroine returned to her original boyfriend, the pompous bureaucrat Ippolit, and had a daughter, also called Nadya. Back in Moscow, Zhenya had a son, Konstantin, with another woman. The various parties live separate lives until Zhenya's old banya buddies mischievously arrange for Konstantin to visit the St. Petersburg apartment where the original comedy of errors took place.

The new film is directed by Bekmambetov, who previously made "Night Watch," a film that dazzled with its imaginative special effects and amused viewers with its blatant product placement. Despite its essentially one-room set, the film sequel includes some flights of fantasy -- a champagne cork rattles through a chandelier in slow motion and foam rises vertically out of the bottle in a sequence around the New Year's chimes, which also includes a clip of President Vladimir Putin reading his traditional midnight address -- but it's the product placement that outraged some viewers.

"It's a walking advertisement," commented Natalya Zaitseva, 30, after watching the film at a Moscow cinema on Sunday. "It's just about earning money."

In the old film, innocent of commercialism, the hero flew Aeroflot and Ippolit drove a shiny orange Lada -- but then again, they didn't have much choice in the matter. The heroine was thrilled by her gift from Ippolit, a tiny bottle of "real French" perfume, and he upbraided her for her spendthrift ways after she gave him an electric razor.

In the new film, the young Nadya powders her nose with a Faberlic compact and her workaholic boyfriend, Irakly, is a manager at cell phone operator Beeline -- which sponsors the film -- and drives a Toyota; another character slathers a salad with Calve mayonnaise, and Zhenya's banya companions knock back Zolotaya Bochka beer.

However, Channel One head Ernst said the product placement didn't interfere with the new storyline, which relies heavily on cell phone gags and plotlines concerning miscommunication. "We don't live in identical prefab buildings anymore," Ernst said, referring to the satirical core of Ryazanov's film. "We realized that the metaphor of 2008 is mobile communications."

Perhaps the most convincing character is Nadya's boyfriend, Irakly, who constantly talks on his hands-free phone and stares at a dial telephone as if it's something out of the ark. The hero Konstantin bombards him with nuisance calls, pretending to be a granny whose television reception is affected by a Beeline mast.

Ernst said the makers decided not to "bashfully" give Irakly's employer a made-up name. In case anyone misses the references in the script, Beeline's yellow-and-black striped logo appears on a tree ornament on the film's poster, as well as on an air freshener in Irakly's car, on his scarf and on a mug in Nadya's kitchen.

"There wasn't any product placement that changed the screenplay," Ernst said. "Working with product placement is absolutely typical for the world of cinema. It's not shameful."

The original film's director and co-writer, Ryazanov, appears in the sequel in the same episodic role of an irate air passenger. He declined an offer to direct the sequel, Ernst said, but approved the screenplay before filming. He doesn't own the rights to the original film, which belong to Mosfilm.

The first screening of the finished film was at Ryazanov's Eldar club in south Moscow, but the 80-year-old director has since stayed quiet about his reaction. An Izvestia reporter wrote that she spoke to his wife, Emma, who said she and Ryazanov had decided not to comment publicly on the film.

"Irony of Fate: Continuation" (Ironiya Sudby: Prodolzheniye) is playing at theaters citywide.