Strannye Chasticy

From the mosquitos visible in the light of the oil-lamp in his bedroom to his cell phone conversations about black holes, little doubt that Konstantin teaches quantum physics. Everything around boils down to atoms; even when he listens to Bach, this is filtered by his perception of the universe as a field of forces. Sensitive to the world’s materiality and humans’ fragile relationship with it, Denis Klebeev takes less than an hour to open our eyes to a vision of the world through the prism of the quantum and discover, for instance, the cosmic properties of the candyfloss that Konstantin buys for himself. Hence the poignant and burlesque side to his summer misadventures: working at his Institute’s summer camp, he tries to teach a gifted but lazy student, but his lessons cannot compete with the beach and the nearby girls’ dormitory. The quantum drift that Konstantin is vainly trying to explain is replaced by the teenagers’ own drifting, especially given the scorching weather… Can a chaperon still use his brains? Once decked out in a tank top, shorts and sunglasses, does a body continue to reflect? How can you reconcile the infinitely large and karaoke? One summer is too short to find the answer, as this attempt to adapt to the “conventional world” could take a whole lifetime… (Charlotte Garson)