I Love Eve

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I Love Eve

2019, короткометражный фильм, 16 минут

Director Kristina Manzhula
Cinematographer Boris Kostomarov
Production designer Eli Jackiewicz
Costume designer Alexandra Kuteko
Makeup artist Elena Mokhova
full credits

Nastya lives with her mother in an uncomfortable apartment in the Moscow suburbs. They moved from a small Siberian town, where the family’s father died at an oil production site. Nastya has only one friend — Eve, a gloomy creature from a damp tunnel in an abandoned hydroelectric power station. Nastya saves money to escape from her mother and her new lover. And one day, Eve comes to their home.

The understanding of what Nastya looks like came fairly quickly. During the ensemble rehearsals, it became noticeable that despite the high degree of conventionality, there was a strong chemistry and a shared emotional core between Diana and Yulia.

Color and mood

Let’s start with the characters. We see through the eyes of the heroine. Alienation, anxiety. The interiors are more oppressive than the natural world — a division into two worlds. The "reality" is built around the figure of the Mother, her control. Elevated reality: some schematicness of the script should naturally transition into the logic of a dream. The color scheme is atypical for the genre.

The color we were looking for is present in everyday life, but we also looked at Roy Andersson’s color palettes.

We were inspired by industrial and urban textures in building the color palettes.

We quickly realized that we didn’t want to make the characters look like pale ghosts with makeup, so we chose costumes based on the actors' organic features, and at the same time, we worked on the color of the sets.

This is an example of working with color and light. The scene is set in the kitchen and is about betrayal — Nastya is isolated and immersed in her Mother’s world, where a new oppressive figure is being established. Behind her is an aggressive spot of the same shades as the Mother’s figure.

The image of Eve

Eve, Nastya’s friend, her personal monster, is an image of a technological disaster in which her oil worker father died, linked to the pain and aggression associated with it.

I saw a tall, graceful figure with exceptionally elegant hands, which were important for the script. I looked at Western examples (such as Javier Botet), but it was sad to realize that people with Marfan syndrome in Russia do not live well enough to act in movies in their free time. However, I met the wonderful Luda Titchenkova on the street, who agreed to be with us throughout the whole process.

The final sketches with a semi-transparent mask and a deformed face underneath

Люда умудрялась шутить из-под формы, пока застывал гипс

При изготовлении отливки мы применили дендро-фекальный принцип конструирования

С третьего раза руки вышли из формы невредимыми

Чтобы сделать слепок легче, мы соединили его из двух половин и заполнили монтажной пеной

Из сотового поликарбоната, оказавшегося под рукой, я сделал две ёмкости, по одной на руку

Месяц мы занимались только Евой — начали с изготовления слепков и тестов фактур. Съёмочных тестов костюма и грима было пять.

Environment and everyday life

The interiors are oppressive, disturbing. They are recognizably post-Soviet, but without attachment to a specific place, the devastation is refracted through the perspective of the main character. We are inspired by the northern texture and the communal lifestyle of St. Petersburg.

For the "domestic part" of the project, the color palettes were determined quite strictly. This decision allowed for simplifying the search for props and achieving the desired impression.

The room was filmed in three different states, initially neutral but following the same principles, the color palette worked to create drama both in nighttime shots and in morning ones.