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HOUSE OF FOOLS Send This Review to a Friend
We're back with the familiar topic of the outside world mixing with mental patients in "House of Fools." This time the psychiatric hospital is on the Russian-Chechen border and the director is Russian filmmaker Andrei Konchalovsky. Those who find their way into the hospital from the world at large are Chechen soldiers who have been caught up in the fighting as the Russians try to beat down the revolt.
The key woman on the inside is the attractive Chechen patient Zhanna (Julia Vysotsky), who lives a fantasy life dreaming that one day her idol, Canadian superstar Bryan Adams, will whisk her away as his true love. But the next best thing for the moment turns out to be Akhmed (Sultan Islamov), one of the Chechen soldiers taking refuge in the hospital, which has been abandoned by its escaping staff in the face of a Russian advance. Akhmed's marriage proposal is a heartbreaking prank, but Zhanna believes him.
The film is an odd mix between the reality of war and the Zhanna's fantasizing. There are too many imaginary moments, which make the film cloying. Yet there is overall beauty to the concept. The story, of course, carries its message of the need for peace, and as has been the case in other such movies, those on the inside reflect more sanity than the society that is entangled in warfare, cruelty and stupidity. A Paramount Classics release
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