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A goggling miserabilism defines Beanpole, making it hard to connect with the film on anything other than an aesthetic level.
The film is an improbably thrilling work of art by virtue of its physical beauty and its relentless intensity of feeling about people — not only Iya and Masha — who would prefer in their heart of shattered hearts to feel nothing.
Even thought it’s a bleak and uncompromising film, it’d be unfair to call Beanpole “misery porn.” The questions it’s asking are much more complicated, and more cutting, than that.