neumu [ cinematronic ]




	House Of Fools
	Andrei Konchalovsky Julia Vysotsky, Sultan Islamov, Stanislav Varkki, Elena Fomina, Marina Politseimako, Bryan Adams, Evgeni Mironov 2002		Attempting to channel some of the cockeyed allure, gallows humor and serious who's-truly-crazy? subtext of the 1967 cult classic "King of Hearts," director Andrei Konchalovsky sets his fact-inspired "House of Fools" in an asylum on the Russian-Chechen border. War is ravaging the area. Bombs are dropping, troops are overrunning the countryside, and the hospital staff heads for safety. The inmates are left to their own devices in the middle of a combat zone, until soldiers show up and bring more havoc to a chaotic situation. Janna, played by Julia Vysotsky, is a winsome beauty with a childish lisp, a fondness for playing the accordion to soothe her fellow patients and a fantasy that she's engaged to real-life Canadian schlock-rocker Bryan Adams (who appears as himself and sings in Janna's reveries). Falling for one of the soldiers holed up at the hospital, Janna plans to escape with him. The image of wacky mental patients flailing in squalor has lost its shock value after many cinematic excursions into the loony bin. Some of the film's indisputable merriment is vulgar and not so politically correct, but the humane, anti-war message of "House of Fools" is a persuasive one.