On the online platforms Wink and Kinopoisk, Fyodor Bondarchuk's series "Actresses" was released. Paulina Andreeva worked on the script ("Doping", "There is a golden city", "Psycho").

In a multi-part art project about the life of several theater and film artists, the central roles in which were played by Elena Nikolaeva, Svetlana Khodchenkova, Polina Pushkaruk, Alexei Guskov, Sergey Gilev and others, the behind-the-scenes of the world is revealed, which seems carefree and simple to the average person. The heroes of the tape are revealed from a rather unsightly side - with all their weaknesses, crises and breakdowns. By the way, all of them turned out to be really original, bright and reliable.

Like many theatrical productions, the series is divided into three acts, the events of which take place in 2014, 2017 and 2020. Moreover, the last act echoes our common reality – the heroes are experiencing quarantine due to the coronavirus pandemic. In it, the problems of artists reach a climax also thanks to the forced period of unemployment, with which each of them is trying to cope in his own way.

One of the main drawbacks of the series is the abundance of profanity, with the help of which, probably, the filmmakers tried to create more believable images. Checkmate certainly adds realism, but to what extent such a decision is justified for a work of fiction designed not for a narrow audience, but for a wide audience is a big question.

In an effort to achieve maximum realism, filmmakers and heroes have sometimes made "people" too alive – vicious, often hysterical, greedy.

  • © A shot from the series "Actresses"

Without exception, all the central characters have their skeletons in the closet and there are no unambiguously positive actors in the film. Sympathy is caused only by children and - in part - the heroine of Polina Pushkaruk Oksana. Her career was threatened by the birth of a daughter, her husband (Pavel Popov) is a weak-tempered, not very talented mama's son, who managed to start a relationship on the side during the second pregnancy of his wife, and her mother-in-law is completely unbearable. Evgenia Dobrovolskaya ("Heavenly Judgment", "I Trust in You", "The Time of the Year is Winter") managed to make an image clichéd by millions of stories and anecdotes so authentic and integral that the character causes almost hatred - like Dolores Umbridge played by Imelda Staunton in the epic about Harry Potter.

Special mention should be made of Lolita Milyavskaya, who brilliantly played Olga Vladimirovna, the director of the theater, in which all the main characters serve or served in one way or another. Her heroine is a purposeful and domineering woman who is in love with a married man (Igor Zolotovitsky), for whom she knocks out the post of artistic director of the theater. Despite the fact that the acting work is far from the main role of Milyavskaya, she plays very convincingly and her character can only be called dramatic.

However, to one degree or another, all the characters of the series are dramatic. Among them are Polina (Svetlana Khodchenkova), a former actress who lost her husband, who as a result returns to the profession and gets into a painful relationship "three" with her agent (Anna Nevskaya) and the "downed pilot" Stepan (Sergey Gilev), as well as Alena (Elena Nikolaeva) - not a very lucky actress, allegedly a friend of Polina, but in fact - a competitor. The heroine is a hysterical and unbalanced person who has an affair with a young translator (Roman Evdokimov) and brings up a son from Stepan. The fates of the heroes are intertwined in a complex and intricate tangle, in which it is quite difficult to understand who is a friend and who is an enemy.

"Actresses" is a solid drama series, with a very strong story and well-written and played characters. From an artistic point of view, the choreographic numbers at the end of several episodes look rather unusual, designed to emphasize the intricacy of emotions and relationships between the characters - it looks really beautiful and stylish. The season finale turns out to be open - the storylines are not even close to over, so the sequel is likely to be.