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       #Post#: 1675--------------------------------------------------
       RAILWAY STATION FOR TWO (1982)
       By: agate Date: May 11, 2017, 2:23 pm
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       This movie was made in the USSR, and the characters call one
       another "comrade."  As used here, the word seems to be used more
       as "pal" or "dude" than as having  political overtones.
       The story is not just clothed in romanticism--it is swaddled in
       layers and layers of it. At times it becomes almost too gooey to
       stand much more of. But it has some surprises too.
       Vera, a waitress at a railway station restaurant, gets involved
       with Platon, a passenger who happens into her life because he
       tries to eat at the restaurant.  Vera already has a boy friend,
       Andrei, and Platon we know to be married. But they fall in love,
       to put it mildly.
       The surprising part comes when Andrei and Platon have a
       confrontation and a fight ensues.  While tables and crockery are
       being smashed at the restaurant, Andrei gets the better of
       Platon every time. In many movies the winner in physical combat
       walks off with the prize, but here Vera still has no use for
       Andrei and stays with Platon, even though he has just been
       humiliated.
       I may be misinterpreting this story, but the entire railway
       station segment of the movie--which is 90 percent of it--is
       probably a figment of Platon's imagination.  At the outset he is
       seen as a prisoner who is sent on leave to see his wife--and to
       pick up an accordion.  He doesn't want to see his wife but the
       circumstances are such that he is going to have to make the
       trip. From then on, the story doesn't make much sense unless
       it's his fantasy.
       It can also work on a real level though. There is Platon's hair.
       When he is first seen he is wearing a prison haircut, probably
       identifiable to all Russians as a prison haircut (I'm guessing
       here). When he is Platon on the trip, he has longer hair. One
       has to wonder if the prison supplied him with a wig, and if so,
       why.  Nothing is said about it.
       Towards the end, when he has presumably finally reached his
       wife's house, entered and found nobody home but an elegant meal
       set out, he has the prison hair. Enter Vera, quite unexpectedly
       (we can assume she found her way there because she has already
       talked about how she called the wife), and she seems to have
       figured out--from the hair change?--that he is a prisoner, not
       the man about to go to trial he has told her he is.
       This interesting story has some hammy segments, and I could have
       done without some of the music fragments woven into it, but the
       acting seems excellent, and we learn about a couple who are
       determined to have a good time together in spite of all
       obstacles.
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