1989, 167 min., colour
Lenfilm, commissioned by the Videofilm Corp.

scenario: Yu.Arabov
camera: S.Yurizditsky
art director: E.Amshinskaya
sound: V.Persov
editor: L.Semenova

music: Y.Khanin

cast: C.Zervudaki, R.Vaab, A.Cherednik, V.Rogovoi.

Save and protect is a philosophical tragedy where the drama of love is just a manifestation of the tragic nature of human life. Man is just a blind stranger, wandering around from his birth to his death. The story of the film is closely connected with the parable of human bondage and laws of fate; it exists beyond historical time and any concrete nationality. The latter is emphasised by a daring artistic device — the heroine's speech is a mixture of Russian and French words without translation.

Tatiana Smorodinskaya (from the annotation of film editor)

Sokurov finds an existential plot in Flaubert's novel Madame Bovary and it becomes the basis of his film Save and Protect (this title is a phrase from an Orthodox Christian prayer). In Switzerland he meets the heroine of his plan Cecile Zervoudaki, the French woman with an extraordinary face and rare profession — an ethnolinguist. In the film Emma speaks French to all her Russian partners, being an alien here. She does not 'fit' in this life: houses are not higher than her waist, and in her bedroom the dark sky replaces the ceiling. Sokurov's metaphor is absolutely cinematographic and tragic.

The word 'duty' has become the title of one of Sokurov's documentaries. All the characters have their duties to life. Emma has an erotic duty that transforms her into a vagrant devil. The soul returns to its home only when the body is buried. Therefore Sokurov presents the episode of the heroine's burial in three coffins as a grandiose multiplex panorama. In a sense, he pays last tribute to substance, restoring the trajectory and rhythm of the descent of the body for which the coffin is the last earthly home.

Alexandra Tuchinskaya

Prizes and awards:

Grand-prix of the XIII International Cinema Festival in Montreal (Canada), FIPRESSI prize (1989).
Grand-prix of the International Cinema Festival in Dunkirk (France), award to Cecile Zervoudaki as Best Actress (1993).

English translation by Anna Shoulgat, © 2002.