You and I

You and I shouldn’t exist. Not just because it’s bad (though it is) but because it feels both specific and wholly random in a way that makes me question who the audience for the movie was. It’s also not that gay. I almost decided not to review it for my site. Then, I learned about the origin of the film and I just had to share.

The source material is a book called t.A.T.u. Come Back. It’s a series of text messages between two lesbian girls initially brought together by their shared obsession with the band t.A.T.u. While I’m unsure about the book, the film takes this one step further and has the girls pen one of t.A.T.u.’s big hits, You and I. So, the story is not quite fan fiction but not quite not fan fiction either. With a story like this, I expected the author to be probably a young woman. Nope! This novel about young lesbian girls and popular Russian dance music group was written by Aleksey Mitrofanov, a wholly adult man who held many careers including being involved in various levels of Russian politics. That’s so insane. With an origin story like that, no wonder the movie sucks.

The lead characters in the film are Lana and Janie. Lana is from a Russian town while Janie is an American living in Moscow. The girls initially meet online. They meet in person to attend a t.A.T.u. concert in Moscow. However, they fail to get in so instead go to a club. At the club, the meet a young rich guy named Edvard. He and his posse invite the girls along for the night and to stay at his apartment. However, the dream soon turns sour. Janie gets into drugs and Lana’s dreams of being a model are dashed. Lana also ends up running afoul of a Russian oligarch. Just when the girls are at their lowest however, a producer discovers Lana’s journal of songs and Janie’s videos of them performing. And wouldn’t you believe it,their favourite band, t.A.T.u wants to buy one of their songs.

The film is fairly vague about how gay it is. Other summaries of the film say that Lana and Janie were online dating before they met in person. I thought they were just friends and read them as such. About halfway through the movie, they have sex. The next morning, Janie is gone which Lana takes as a rejection. Janie likewise assumes rejection as she thinks Lana has slept with Edvard. So they’re apart for most of the rest of the movie until their reunion at the end. Said reunion involves handholding and dancing together so again, sort of ambiguous if they’re friends or girlfriends. I suppose for a movie about t.A.T.u., who are two straight women who played with lesbian ambiguity, that is sort of fitting though.

Things really just kind of happen in You and I. Lana and Janie experience some major highs and major lows. All of them come around without any buildup. They get dragged into the world of rich but sleazy people because basically, someone sees them. Similarly, Janie posts a video of them performing on YouTube and mentions it has zero hits. But luckily, later in the movie, somehow a music producer has found it. Also, Lana’s run-in with an oligarch ends with her going to jail for three months is so convoluted as to feel random. The film has plot points it wants to hit but no idea how to get there. Its solution is for characters to just see Janie and Lana and invite them along to whatever their next plot point is without any motivation to do so.

You and I is bad at connecting events and I’m bad at connecting thoughts so here’s some random tidbits. Lana, the Russian character is played by Misha Barton which is staggeringly unbelievable. Any Russian atmosphere dissolves whenever she’s onscreen. Her accent is very bad. Also, Barton is beautiful and poised. She also constantly sports a full face of makeup and beautiful hair. She’s wildly unbelievable as a humble, small-town girl. The whole conceit of the movie that Lana and Janie wrote such a good song t.A.T.u. took notice is insane. I really don’t buy that producers for a Russian electronic dance group were this invested in a piece of good songwriting. It’s not exactly the focus of the genre. Also, there’s a scene where Janie smokes a joint but it’s the wrong way around so she lights and smokes the filter.

You and I is very bad. The film is tacky in a way that dates it but also makes it a timeless example of bad taste. It’s a movie involving drug addiction and a bit of sex trafficking yet feels sanitized and sort of goofy. There’s constant use of voice-over and characters just talking to themselves because the film is incapable of even writing dialogue that would advance the plot or the characters. It’s also not even that gay. There’s no reason this movie should exist and no reason to see it either.

Overall rating: 3.2/10

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