Zoology

Katya (Masha Tokareva), a frumpy, lonely middle-aged woman working in the purchasing department of a struggling zoo in a provincial Russian city, is bullied and ridiculed by her co-workers and dominated by her mother, who is a hysterical religious fanatic. Katya inexplicably grows a tail, which brings her to a handsome young X-ray technician (Dmitriy Groshev), whose romantic interest inspires a sexy makeover. Director Ivan I. Tverdovsky has plenty of sympathy for Katya, who seems to have accepted her misery (her only real joy is in communing with the animals of the zoo) until this new possibility of happiness arrives and even gives her the self-confidence to let her tail be seen publicly. The story serves as a metaphor for individuality in a conformist culture, where an overweight, dowdy woman dares to present herself publically as a sexual being, and Tverdovsky is scathing in his portrait of small-minded, provincial attitudes as Katya's behavior brings out petty gossip and hostile judgments in her community. The film also paints a pretty dispiriting portrait of life in contemporary Russia, where the culture still seems to have a foot squarely in 19th-century superstition and intolerance. Recommended. (S. Axmaker)