Балабанов. Перекрестки

Darya Ezerova. “Me Too”: Between Fantastic & Magical Realism

In an interview following the release of his last feature film “Me Too” Aleksei Balabanov referred to it as a work of “fantastic realism”. This succinct formulation alludes to the tradition of magical realism and invites a close analysis of the film in the light of the artistic movement that perhaps had the most complex relationship with 20th-century literary modernism.

With the unexplained fantastic elements seamlessly interwoven with Balabanov’s signature hyper-realism, bizarre naming, themes of death and transcendence, and the incantation-like, disorienting soundtrack, “Me Too” demonstrates the director’s take on magical realism and in this way becomes distinctly different from the rest of Balabanov’s oeuvre.

This paper strives to uncover a less-studied modernist strand in Balabanov’s work—that of magical realism—through a close analysis of the ways in which its various tropes and elements are employed and re-imagined in his last film.