Synopsis
"A Black Rose Is an Emblem of Sorrow, a Red Rose an Emblem of Love" (1990) is a Soviet fantasy-drama you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Sergei Solovyov — 139 minutes of absurdism, lyric Moscow, and the last gasps of the USSR.
The story is anchored in a tenement building on Old Arbat Street, where a teenage millionaire, a faded nobleman, an Arbat beauty, a dissident from out of town, and an elegant superman share corridors that feel less residential than theatrical. At the centre sits the boy Mitya, and around him the building tilts steadily into unreality — a compressed image of a country falling apart. Tatyana Drubich, Alexander Abdulov, Alexander Zbruev, and Lyudmila Savelyeva make up a cast Solovyov trusted to play full absurdity completely straight.
Solovyov had already made "ASSA" before this. "Black Rose" goes further — it refuses genre, sidesteps realism, and lands somewhere between elegy and hallucination. If late Soviet Moscow had a fever dream, this is what it looked like. Stream it online on iFILM.
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