One of many predominant worries of our age is the need to dwell authentically. There’s a profusion of technological developments and variables — now extending to synthetic intelligence — that each assist and hamstring us from attaining this, with a lot neurosis and self-consciousness introduced on if we will’t. The 2010s and the continuing Trump period have additionally intensified the clamor for id politics, the place a typically fragile sense of empowerment is gained by asserting distinction within the face of mass American conformity.
So, the faux-inspirational consequence is that we should embrace our reality, and “Slay, Serve, and Survive,” to reference the in-film actuality present contest in Nastasya Popov’s SXSW premiere “Idiotka.” Premiering within the non-competitive Narrative Highlight part, Popov’s upbeat and genial comedy capably interrogates these concepts, with its story of a younger, aspiring LA dressmaker (from a Russian emigré background not in contrast to the director’s personal) who goes on the now-time-honored actuality TV journey of self-aggrandizement and canny opportunism, while pragmatically hoping the monetary rewards may uplift her struggling household from poverty.
Debuting as a author/director (with a narrative help from the movie’s producer Tess Cohen), Popov is meditating on related themes, however what she diagnoses in regards to the superficiality of the self-serving media and vogue worlds is already obtained knowledge, relatively than the deadly satire she’s aiming for.
Though they’re hyperbolized in a sitcom-like method, what’s extra ingratiating is the heat by which she exhibits the lead’s character solely partially assimilated household. Margarita (Anna Baryshnikov, who not too long ago shone in “Love Lies Bleeding”) is launched talking direct-to-camera within the acquainted TikTok-manner, with the spangly vogue supplies strewn round her simply begging to be mixed right into a Met Gala-worthy ensemble. As she peppily however bittersweetly narrates her household’s travails, whom she nonetheless resides with post-college, her spirited babushka Gita (Galina Jovovich) barges into the shot to berate her in Russian, her eyeshadow and lipstick radioactively colourful, all capturing the movie’s seesawing dynamic in a single mere comedian gesture.
Their residence in a down-at-heel a part of West Hollywood encompasses what could possibly be referred to as her mixed-extended household, along with her paternal grandmother in Gita and her unemployed father Samuel (Mark Ivanir, late of a number of Steven Spielberg movies) performing as an awkwardly de facto “Mother and Dad.” Her overtly queer brother Nerses (Nerses Stamos) completes the brood — a pointed characterization in mild of their motherland’s institutionalized homophobia.
Certainly, the long run appeared brighter after they first emigrated to the U.S. within the waning days of communism, however Samuel’s disbarment as a health care provider, and subsequent incarceration, resulting from Medicaid fraud — against the law to be sympathetic to! — has left them failing to fulfill hire funds and dealing with eviction (modern Russian corruption is flippantly referenced via the unscrupulous gangster who provides a threatening go to).
So when Margarita is accepted onto the Challenge Runway-alike “Slay, Serve, Survive,” which admirably seeks to uplift underprivileged vogue design hopefuls with equal components respect and condescension, it’s a possible a meal ticket fulfilling her skilled desires and hopes for household stability. The on- and off-screen personas to spar with are the present’s manipulative but in the end compassionate producer Nicol (“Riverdale” star Camila Mendes); its flamboyant host Oliver (Owen Thiele), whose catty talkbacks embody the youth slang of the present’s moniker; and most notably, infamous vogue mogul Emma Wexler (Julia Fox, in a heat riff on her typical picture) as a choose. Among the many co-contestants, the Korean-American Jung-Soo (Jake Choi) seems essentially the most gifted (and eligible as a love curiosity), regardless of the avowed arduous knocks of his background seeming doubtful.
Popov’s screenplay gives its most comedic and ironic — if not absolutely satirical — efficiency, when Margarita’s background is distorted by Nicol to induce essentially the most pity, and the place within the duties for development to additional rounds, stereotypes on Jap European poverty and her father’s jail stint put a hunched-posture bag woman, and an orange jail jumpsuit, with tastefully organized chains, on the catwalk to vogue. The director additionally achieves apt comedian timing with the judges’ offbeat suggestions, the place the road between a design’s “woke” and “un-woke” credentials shifts chimerically; beneficially, these jokes are by no means to indict this mind-set, solely displaying how a barely higher consciousness of social justice dangers empty signifiers and reductive representations.
But dampening the influence of “Idiotka” is how its emphasis on the household’s camaraderie and integrity is at cross-purposes with its satirical targets, each thematically and in a structural sense. It’s absolutely on Margarita’s facet in wanting her apparent vogue abilities to exist independently to her background (though the precise specificity of her imaginative and prescient isn’t laid out, past references to inspirations like Yohji Yamamoto and Muji).
With the falsity of actuality TV something however a contemporary goal, Popov additionally arguably exhibits her hand, because the sincerity of the household’s depiction evidences her true funding and motivation in telling the story of “Idiotka,” and regardless of the heightened performances that brush towards stereotype, creates essentially the most authenticity.
Grade: C+
“Idiotka” premiered on the SXSW 2025 Movie Pageant. It’s at present looking for U.S. distribution.
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