It seems a Grindhouse movie or if you prefer a Tarantino’s movie, with the trailers of erotic movies and advertisements from the seventies. Therefore, we thought we were facing something different from what we later saw.
This disorientation, however, lasted very little, exactly the time of the same trailer, with their cheerful music. Already in the first images of the film, it is clear that the road is another, emphasized by the same director and protagonist Pavel Ruminov who says, "I am a director of Art House".
A phrase that may have been said by the character that he interprets but according to the notes, this film is autobiographical and therefore it is Ruminov himself to label himself net of a filmography that extends long and wide between thrillers, horror and drama (at least according to the labels of IMDB) and that ends here between grotesque, drama and porn.
However, "Art House" is the most appropriate definition for "Love Machine" that speaks of feelings and is interpreted, as well as by the director, by his ex girlfriend. Good for Ruminov that should also explain how to have a relationship so serene and open with a former girlfriend, so to put it in a movie where she strips and have sex. Apart from this, history, as autobiographical as possible, is rather intuitive and serves for the experimentation and artistic vision of the Russian director.
A cinematography of saturated colors, well-studied and sometimes symbolic scenes (the naked woman playing with Rubik's cube) shows that the director has left nothing to chance and that, above all, he has a good hand. Hard moments that come out here and there (besides Ruminov there is also his penis as a protagonist in masturbation scenes), oral sex, naked women, enter this movie in the field of pornography, although in our modest opinion it seems to us a ' Label too exaggerated.
To this are added some ironic moments and various film and music quotes. Perhaps sometimes he gets too long in inner monologues but we are quite sure the director's goal was not to tell something upsetting but to probe the relationships between people, sex, affection and make a visually pleasing thing. And he succeeded. Widely.
Sex is one of the best things in the relationship with Natasha, but one day the relationship ends. She didn’t accept that because she considers them inseparable (like the Twix's bars) and begins a sort of stalking. Pavel who is again engaged is trying to avoid Natasha, and to protect the new girlfriend but there is a bond, something that unites him to the past.
The finale with the "joie de vivre" (so define an orgy) closes all.
You can see "Love Machine" on Vimeo.