A woman one day grows a tail. No matter how seamlessly this Russian fantasy renders its Kafkaesque mutation, it’s impossible not to see Zoology as a potent parable about the dangers of being “different” within modern Russian society.
As described in an email interview with the Chronicle, filmmaker Ivan Tverdovsky concocted this role for Natalya Pavlenkova, an actress with four decades of experience and with whom he also had worked on his 2014 directorial debut Corrections Class. Pavlenkova plays Natasha, a frumpy Russian zoo worker who lives with her mother and is mocked by her fellow workers. After a sudden backache, she awakes the next day with a thick tail that reaches below her knees, although she learns to hide it by wrapping it in her undergarments. The local priest sends her packing, the doctor keeps sending her back for another X-ray, and members of the community whisper furtively about a woman in their midst who’s been cursed with the sign of the devil. Yet a glimmer of hope emerges when Petya (Dmitriy Groshev), the radiologist, shows romantic interest in Natasha, who responds by bobbing her hair and raising her hemline. Alas, she’s not the first woman to be taken in by a man with a fetish.
Is Natasha’s situation, which is played more for drama than laughs, terribly different from that of gay men and women who attempt to come out publicly in Putin’s Russia? Or political dissidents or other citizens who deviate from the social norms? Zoology is a thoughtful parable about embracing one’s difference instead of turning tail.
Zoology screens again Monday, Sept. 26, 8:30pm.
Fantastic Fest 2016 runs Sept. 22-29 at the Alamo South Lamar. Tickets and info at www.fantasticfest.com, and follow our ongoing coverage at austinchronicle.com/fantastic-fest.
This article appears in September 23 • 2016.
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