You I Love, directed by Oleg Stolpovskaya and Dmitry Troitsky, is a Russian film that pushes the envelope about love triangles in modern Moscow into the realms of comedy and bisexuality. The three principal characters are very different. Timofei Pechorin (played by Evgeny Koryakosky) is a nerdy television adwriter; his boss is a gay African American. Vera Kirillova (played by Lubov Tolkalina) is a famous, attractive television news anchor who likes to eat sweets. Uloomji (played by Damir Badmaev), a Kalmyk born into a shepherding family in Central Asia, now works in the Moscow Zoo; presumably undocumented (along with 11 percent of the Russian population, according to a news story) and homeless but cute and handsome, he entertains himself by simulating tightrope walking about town. (The Kalmyks are an ethnic group that left Mongolia in the seventeenth century to settle in the Lower Volga along the Caspian Sea; they swore allegiance to Russia in order to receive military protection from the Tatars.) The three meet in unexpected ways. Timofei and Vera are both lunching in adjacent chairs at a restaurant when he furtively pulls Vera's wallet out of her purse. When she realizes that she has no money to pay the bill for a pastry that she ordered, Timofei tells her that he saw someone snatch her wallet and then offers to pay for her meal; soon, he is asking her out on dates, eventually leading to daily sexual activity in his apartment. One year later, Uloomji is trying to walk on a fence along a road; when he loses his balance, he falls on Timofei's car. Timofei stops, carries an unconscious Uloomji to his car and takes him to a hospital, which is too leery of possible criminal implications to provide immediate treatment. But Uloomji appears all right, and so he takes him home to recuperate. After recovering, Uloomji is interested in having sex with Timofei and is very seductive, but he is careful not to press his luck, awaiting Timofei to take the first step. Then the following afternoon, Vera knocks on Timofei's door as usual, finds the door slightly ajar, and enters; when she discovers the hand of a sleeping Timofei touching Uloomji's thigh, she retreats but returns when Timofei provides the beginning of an explanation. In time, Timofei and Uloomji have sex, and Vera becomes content with the love triangle. The plot thickens when Uloomji's homophobic uncle Vanya (played by Victor Shevidov), a government chauffeur, appears on the scene unexpectedly; Vera then pretends to be a transsexual who is urging the same for Uloomji. Shocked, Vanya summons Uloomji's parents (played by Valentina Mankhadykova and Anatoly Mankhadykov), who kidnap him for medical and psychiatric examinations and later force him to join the army. The film has several amusing wild scenes, including a threesome at a bisexual sex club and an army barracks where macho soldiers appear to be lusting after Uloomji. In a scene captioned "Two Years Later," there is a happy ending for all, consistent with the free-spirited tempo of the film, in which bisexuality fancifully triumphs over the two prominent lifestyle alternatives of homo- and hetero-sexuality. Although filmviewers have to imagine how such an outcome could ever be possible, You I Love joins the pro-bisexuality genre that includes such recent European films as Bulgarian Lovers, Confusion of Genders, I Will Survive, My Mother Likes Women, The School of Flesh, and Second Skin. MH
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