21/02/2023 - BERLINALE 2023: In her second feature, Ukrainian director Tonya Noyabrova immerses us in the world of a teenager growing up in Kyiv a year before the dissolution of the Soviet Union

In her second feature, Do You Love Me? [+see also:
trailer
interview: Tonya Noyabrova
film profile], world-premiering in the Berlinale's Panorama, Ukrainian director Tonya Noyabrova plunges us into the world of a teenager growing up in Kyiv in 1990, a year before the breakdown of the Soviet Union. Light on plot but excellent in its re-creation of the era, the film sensitively explores the character played by promising newcomer Karyna Khymchuk. Coupled with the rising interest in Ukrainian cinema, this should secure it further festival berths, and even limited distribution in select territories.

We meet 17-year-old Kira (Khymchuk) in the opening scene, trying on clothes and dancing to the film's recurring track, Bananarama's "Venus", in front of a mirror in her family's large flat. A celebration is taking place there: it seems to be her parents' 19th wedding anniversary, but as Noyabrova tells the whole story from Kira's point of view, we get as much information as she is interested in – and this is not one of those nuggets.

When she enters the large living room, we realise the family is upper-middle-class, her father a film director and she an aspiring actress. Fittingly, she charms her way through clusters of guests, including Dad's sleazy friend who has brought Marlboros and Pepsi from Paris. Grandpa, his jacket covered in medals, wants to give a speech; Kira yet again steals Mum's lipstick, while in the background, a tipsy man proclaims that you can only have film sets and theatres as long as you support Soviet ideology.

It's a lively event, but when we go out with Kira the next day, we quickly see that reality is closing in. The radio informs us that most people are getting their groceries (73% of which comprises alcoholic drinks) via ration cards. At the flea market, Mum is only buying the most basic things while Kira asks about a pirated VHS of The Terminator and Madonna's new album. At school, her classmates are impressed by the Pepsi can she has brought, but at the film studio, Dad learns he is now out of work.

As the country is breaking down, so is the family: after Kira witnesses her parents' drunk, jealous argument, she takes all the drugs from the bathroom cabinet, washed down with vodka. She is woken up, and forced to vomit, by 25-year-old paramedic Misha (Oleksandr Zhyla), whom she will later run into, fall in love with and move in with. There, the arrangement is very different than it is at home: Misha lives in an apartment shared by several poverty-stricken families.

Aside from Kira's character arc, which takes her from teenage dreamland into painful reality as she clumsily matures, this is as much of the plot as there is. Khymchuk is an excellent vessel for this rebellious, insecure and barely self-aware teenager, with her face of a curious 12-year-old and large, blue eyes. Maksym Myhayilychenko as the selfish, self-defeating Dad and Natalia Lezebnikova as the bitter Mum are convincing enough, but mostly remain in the background.

Thematically and aesthetically, though, it is a very rich film. Lithuanian DoP Vilius Machiulskis creates complex, multi-layered scenes in socialist-brown interiors, meticulously designed by Volodymyr Romanov, and pinpoints the vibe of the end of an era in deteriorating exteriors. Niklas Skarp's sound design is instrumental in transporting us to Kira's inner world, where the scene in which she falls in love with Misha after her first sexual experience is particularly immersive and relatable.

Do You Love Me? is a co-production between Ukraine's Family Production and Sweden's Common Ground Productions. Urban Sales handles the international rights.