Rebro Adama (1991) User Reviews

kitchen sink Russian character study is a diamond in the rough

[mjneu59 · 8/10 · 11 November 2010]

This bittersweet Russian import likely never found an audience after being falsely marketed as a 'sexy, spicy comedy' about three women who 'make love to the Revolution' (whatever that means). The film is actually a quiet, graceful character study of a twice-divorced woman and her two grown daughters, trying to sort out their problems (with men, with money, and with each other) in their claustrophobic Moscow apartment. It's been compared to the working class comedy dramas of Mike Leigh, and not without reason: the emotional moment when the 49-year old heroine vents a lifetime of frustration on her bedridden mother is reminiscent of a key scene at the climax of Leigh's 'Life Is Sweet'. This wasn't the first time director Vyachaslev Krishtofovich was let down by American advertising ineptitude (see 'Lonely Woman Seeks Life Companion'), and the problem here is compounded by the choice of title, with its echoes of Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. But don't be misled: the film is a poignant and (by new Russian standards) surprisingly understated drama, all the more welcome at a time when the ersatz Soviet film industry was becoming more westernized.

Aka the bone in the penis (vhs)

[leplatypus · 7/10 · 7 January 2017]

the Russian title uses the biblical myth of women creation but some think the missing bone was located according to my title, all the more than all males have indeed a big scare there! To come back to this movie, it's indeed a movie about women because we have 3,5 generations of them living by themselves in a too small apartment because they fail to find a decent companion. Now, to put a dynamic into this promiscuity, this movie is a sort of a soviet Juno as the youngest member becomes pregnant. For sure, we have the expected big family gathering around a meal and others moments of soviet life (everybody works, black markets for food and drugs). It's true that the story isn't really fun but at the end, their solidarity and kindness overcome all problems and it's not at all a dark drama! It's a really optimistic look at the human condition and as the cast is really engaging, this is finally a really good soviet movie! (the only moments I zapped were the ones with the grandmother in bed because my family faced this situation too and now it's over we, don't really want to recall this period. in a way, this movie could be very close to your personal life also, more than you can imagine!)

and don't forget the humour

[Caledonia Twin #1 · 31 January 2001]

I agree with the comments already made on this film; it is beautiful, realistic, gritty, overloaded with sharp humour and a lyrical quality within the imagery of the nostalgic sequences, imagery that is intangibly appealing yet unmistakably evocative. Though this film may at first glance seem unexciting to the action film fan, "Rebro Adama" has more than enough action crammed into a film less than two hours long; the lives of the family are turned upside-down in a short time, and the future for the family becomes raw, unpredictable, as unpredictable as the future of Russia was in 1990. Moreover, I couldn't help but admire the cheeky, almost caustically humorous, tough teenage girl, Nastiya. This is an excellent film I would recommend to those who appreciate dark, realistic humor and unpredictable, independent film story lines that leave no contrived aftertaste. My rating: 8/10.

Benefit of Inna Churikova

[Zhorzhik-Morzhik · 9/10 · 8 March 2020]

"Adam's Rib" is a comedy drama by Vyacheslav Krishtofovich. The USSR as a country is living its last days, but a strong Soviet film school is still alive. The life of four generations of members of a large family under one roof, somotaya only of women. All of them, except the old grandmother, have to find their way in life in the eternal search for personal happiness. Benefit of Inna Churikova.

this room is too small

[buonesargen3 · 10/10 · 30 June 2006]

Another classic that has been forgotten. Displaced by lack of advertising and the studio monopolies. This film confronts the USSR society at the time it still existed and would be able to imprison dissenters. Corougeously the writers and everyone involved made this sharp, realistic comment on the state using a domestic setting. In a cramped flat a woman lives with her paralyzed mother and two daughters from 2 marriages, in Moscow. As optimism and democracy come offering a better future they find their already meager lives turned upside down with uncertainty. Made in 1990 it has become prophetic with increased poverty and the Russina mafia threatening peoples lives resulting in the return of the Communists that people were desperate to be rid of believing that democracy would be their Saviour.

Beautiful, and terribly real.

[iliawarlock · 13 November 2000]

Every now and then one views a film which seems to stay in one's mind, a film of which one cannot let go, and painfully one is forced to wonder and guess and think--what was it that touched me so deeply? The plot of "Adam's Rib" (by excellent author Vladimir Kunin), is simple. A middle-aged woman, her paralyzed mother, and her two daughters from different husbands live together, in a tiny two-room (note, two rooms, not two bedrooms), apartment in Moscow, during the very last days of the dying Soviet Empire. Both her daughters work, and so does she, as a tour-guide in the Borodino Museum. Simply an aging, beautiful, intelligent woman working monstrously hard to make ends meet. Her eldest daughter works in an office, and is in love with her manager. Her youngest is a grocery-store clerk, exploring her fifteen year-old body with a young plebeian man, who works as a security guard. A simple, hard, and monotonous existence shared by four women, and three incredibly different generations in a tiny, dark apartment. And then, suddenly, in the midst of this deadly dull and monotonous life, Ninna Elizarovna meets a man who falls in love with her, and life grows enormously more complicated. I will say nothing more, so as not to spoil the plot for the viewer, but the qualities of this film are unmistakable. The spectacular acting ability of the main heroine, played by Inna Churikova, the talented camera-work which brings into sharp focus the uncertain, dangerous, and occasionally, startlingly beautiful life in a country which brought itself to the brink of an abyss, the shadowy terror and sorrow cast by the flashback memories that the Grandmother sees of her terrible, decades-old crime, the intelligent dialogue and sharply questioning scenario--all of this combines into a magnificent work.