Brief Encounters (1967) review

Government worker Valentina (Muratova) takes in Nadya (Nina Ruslanova) to be her housekeeper, but Nadya seems consumed with the past, and as it turns out both ladies have a history with geologist Maxim (Vladimir Vysotsky).  It was probably not easy making films in the Soviet Union considering the censorship (and paranoia), but that's still not much of an excuse for the movie to be this vague and completely aggravating, and since it consists of mostly flashbacks it feels like it's actually going backwards instead of forward.  Muratova was most likely influenced by the French New Wave when she was working on this, except she borrowed the absolutely worst elements of that movement and tried passing it off as "poetry."  It's worth mentioning that Vysotsky, who was a well-respected musician in his home country, sure had a fantastic voice, and it's a shame he died at the alarmingly young age of 42 (although the pessimist in me figures it wasn't a totally "natural" death).