Hearty retired nurse Elena lives with a former patient, her ailing, wealthy husband of a few years in a posh part of Moscow. Her ne'er-do-well son meanwhile lives with his wife and similarly aimless son in a crumbling apartment block on the wrong side of town near what looks like a nuclear power plant.
Husband's semi-estranged daughter also enters the equation, a good-time girl in her early 20's with a key, incisive philosophy. Elena must act against her husband's wishes to get her grandson to university, thus saving him from military service. But if she succeeds, will anything really change for her family?
If Zvyagintsev's The Return combined a gripping story with atmospheric photography and The Banishment's merits were aesthetic over storyline, it's the turn of Elena to place plot above photography. Not unexpectedly, it's a solemn slow burner; one which touches upon some interesting moral issues. Echoes of Claude Chabrol's Juste Avant la Nuit at the end. Soundtrack by Philip Glass.
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