The Shooting Party

Stars: Galina Belyayeva, Oleg Yankovsky. Based on a story by Anton Chekhov, The Shooting Party is a nicely filmed but ponderous romance which captures Chekhov's fear and mistrust of the fairer sex, but lacks the subtlety of the Russian master's writing. Told in flashback, the story opens with a magistrate named Sergei Kamyshev (Oleg Yankovsky) approaching a publisher with a novel based on his experiences as a young man. Like the mariner in Coleridge's famous poem, Kamyshev is also guilt-laden and finds himself driven to repeat his tale. As the publisher begins reading, the film flashes back to introduce a young Sergei in an idyllic country setting in pre-Czarist Russia. Visiting an ailing aristocratic friend, Sergei and his buddy come upon a vision in the forest: a woodsman's daughter running through the trees. Courting the young maiden named Olga (Galina Belyayeva), Sergei finds she is a fickle girl to say the least. He is stunned and hurt when she first takes up with his friend and later marries an older man whom she doesn't love. The twist comes in the final reel, when a hunting party involving all the principals ends in tragedy, revenge, and deception. Audience: Most would find this very slow going.