The film is about 2 incredibly conflicted men who have found love but are otherwise cursed by circumstances. From the first scene one knows it isn't going to be a haply film, but it is beautiful nonetheless and, like Brokeback Mountain, features silences that speak volumes.

Once more we are reminded of how fortunate we are in most "liberal" democracies. Two stunningly shocking scenes occur in the first fifteen minutes of this film to set the tone of oppression and repression.

Two men, secret lovers, go on a trip through Siberia to visit a sick relative. The scenery, while wild and beautiful, does nothing to lessen the pervasive sense of doom of the film - it festers with ruined villages, depopulated industrial units, half-witted villagers too deprived to have moved, widows eking out an existence. It's a metaphor for the poison that has been instilled into the minds of these two men. What they have is beautiful like the landscape, but it is riddled with decay and hopelessness.

The denouement, when it comes, is shocking in its suddenness. The epilogue to this is just as dreadfully hard to watch.

I was riveted throughout. The dialogue was to the point, alien to someone brought up in the milieu of cosmopolitan London despite homosexuality being forbidden during my formative years, but atrociously fascinating. The persecution shown in this film was of a different order from what went on in my youth. We had the swinging sixties, at least. Here in Siberia there is no relief even in an escape to a big city.

I certainly recommend this film.

Literally, it's as good as being a zombie if 2 men dare fall on love in soulless Russia. Heartache to see something so basic, so natural, so precious, as in like breathing, can have its life sucked out of one's full existence for just being one's true self. Vacuum land of doom.