Him & Her
2021 · 17m · Rusia
Directed by Daria Geller
Tones: contemplative, melancholic
A struggling singer and her husband-manager travel from show to show across the Russian provinces, falling in and out of love. They realize how much they need and despise each other in equal measure.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
It's competent relationship drama across Russian backwater towns—the kind of melancholic European chamber piece that plays exactly as advertised, which means it plays nowhere near my radar.
Geller sustains a formal precision in how she choreographs intimacy and resentment in cramped spaces, building a measured argument about artistic partnership that echoes the Dardenne brothers' attention to economic pressure grinding down love.
The decision to keep the camera mostly still during their fights—letting the two bodies move through fixed frames rather than cutting into the emotion—is what transforms this from tired relationship autopsy into something that actually breathes.