Issue 87 (2025) |
Nataliia Meshchaninova: My Little Nighttime Secret (Odin malen’kii nochnoi sekret, 2023) reviewed by Emily Schuckman Matthews © 2025 |
Nataliia Meshchaninova’s 90-minute feature film, My Little Nighttime Secret, labeled 18+ for mature audiences, immerses the viewer in one day in the life of a seemingly ordinary family celebrating the advent of a new year. The film opens with a fixed shot of a typical Soviet-style apartment building in the wee hours of New Year’s Eve morning. While most residents sleep, a few windows are bright with light, sparking curiosity in the viewer about what is taking place in each lit cube. Meshchaninova brings the viewer into one of the apartments, capturing a husband and wife asleep on a fold-out bed in the living room, their slumbering faces occasionally illuminated by the light from fireworks exploding outside. The man wakes up, tiptoes to the kitchen, and unearths a hidden gift, wrapped carefully for the holiday. He sneaks into his daughter’s room and leaves the box on her pillow, accidentally waking her in the process. Encouraged by her father, she opens the gift: Apple air pods, and, after giving him a wan look, falls back asleep. The man creeps back to the couch, initiates intimacy with his wife just before the idyll is shattered by the screech of a cat as the New Year’s tree tumbles over, triggering not only chaos in the room but waking a baby who begins to cry.
Once morning dawns, the sleeping teenager, Mira (Taisya Kalinina), emerges from her room, dutifully helps her parents clean up the mess created by the rambunctious cat and cares for her still fussy baby sister. While the family bustles and plans the evening’s festivities, Mira is palpably on edge when her father, Andrei (Stepan Devonin), is present. Played by Meshchaninova’s real-life husband, 35-year-old actor Stepan Devonin physically transformed himself for the role into the pudgy and greying embodiment of a contented middle-aged man. Mira subtly conceals a scowl when he speaks and avoids his physical presence, shrinking away from him when he attempts to tickle her. She is significantly warmer and more relaxed with her mother (Elena Plaksina), a loving but distracted presence, obviously overwhelmed with the demands of parenting a teenager and the infant. Mira begs her to let her spend the evening at her friend Lera’s (Margarita Silaeva) house, chastising her mother when she says no, deferring to Andrei, who we learn is, in fact, Mira’s stepfather. As the film progresses, the deeply disturbing secret lurking beneath the veneer of what appears to be a happy family is revealed: the stepfather is not the devoted family man he initially appears to be but is rather a predator who regularly subjects Mira to sexual abuse. The portrayal of the taboo subject of child sexual abuse on screen, contextualized within typical family life not only heightens the horror of the violence but depicts it as something more widespread than one may ever guess in other “typical” Russian homes.
Meshchaninova’s film is an adaptation of her deeply personal, autobiographical short story by the same name which appeared in her debut collection of stories (Meshchaninova, 2017). Prior to the book, elements of the story appeared in Meshchaninova’s social media posts (Kobzeva 2023). Overcoming feelings of isolation and assumptions that she was alone in her traumatic experience, she decided to post about the abuse inflicted on her by her stepfather after she simply “couldn’t stand it” any longer (Kobzeva 2023). The posts and subsequent book ignited a flood of responses from readers, mostly female survivors of childhood sexual domestic violence, desperate to share their own experiences. Reflecting on the women’s stories and the subsequent statistics she learned about the prevalence of the sexual abuse of children in their own homes, Meshchaninova notes: “domestic violence is something you cannot forget, and people who wrote to me about their traumatic experiences finally realized that it is possible to talk about it, and not keep it to themselves” (Romodanovskaia 2023). For Meshchaninova, the process of telling her own story in writing and then in film is an experience she describes as having “an amazing therapeutic effect” (Romodanovskaia 2023).
My Little Nighttime Secret, financed in part by Roman Abramovich’s KinoPrime fund, premiered in competition in 2023 at the Rotterdam International Film Festival and has been shown in Shanghai and at a handful of festivals and special screenings in Russia. It was awarded the audience jury prize at the XVII Andrei Tarkovsky Mirror International Film Festival (Guseva 2023). Despite this positive critical attention, the film has not been distributed to Russian theaters and has yet to be acquired by a streaming platform (Romodanovskaia 2023).
After Mira mopes through the New Year’s Eve celebrations with her family, Andrei relents and lets her leave with her friend, making her promise it will be just the two of them and no boys. Predictably, this promise lasts merely minutes as the two meet up with her friend’s brother and his friend, Dani (Oleg Savostiuk), who is visiting from Riga and with whom Mira has an instant connection. As the group wanders through the town’s new year’s celebrations, they find themselves in an empty field to watch Dani spin lit fireballs attached to the end of ropes. Like her friends, Mira is mesmerized by the beauty of the flame swirling against the dark sky and is eventually enticed to join him. After some initial awkwardness, the two become engaged in a sort of dance, their eyes locked on one another, their bodies and the fire swirling in rhythm in the cold night. Meshchaninova slows the pace of the film here; the only sound is the pulsing and rhythmic swishing of the fireballs as they pass through air. The viewer observes a freedom in Mira’s intense focus and intentional but spontaneous movements for the first and last time in the film. For the next thirty minutes, even after the youth return to their friends’ apartment for an alcohol fueled night, Dani and Mira are drawn together, their infatuation reaching a crescendo as they partner again in a slow dance, the camera slowly turning around them in a representation of their disorienting adolescent emotions. The music at the party is notable as it is mostly pop hits from the 1990s, a choice Meshchaninova describes as both reflective of what kids today are listening to on social media platforms like TikTok and one that contributes to what she calls the “timelessness” of the film (Romodanovskaia 2023). Indeed, except for the family viewing President Putin’s traditional midnight new year’s address, there is little in the film that indicates a period other than some time post 2000. This “timelessness” casts Mira’s story as not just a feature of the present-day culture but rather as an enduring reality in too many young people’s lives across the decades.
As with several of her other productions, Meshchaninova’s exceptional ability to realistically and compellingly cinematize the often disturbing social and interior lives of Russian youth is on full display in My Little Nighttime Secret. Not only is the dialogue believable as the teens interact, but she conveys an unobtrusive naturalism in her portrayal of the vibrant youth as they wander the town with other holiday revelers and cosplay grown-ups, mixing cocktails, and lounging at the house party. Meshchaninova also excels at connecting her characters’ inner turmoil with their external, often self-destructive, behavior, capturing the way trauma permeates their lived experiences. This film is particularly adept at capturing Mira’s struggle as she navigates the challenging dynamics of adolescent friendships, crushes and struggles for independence. As if these dynamics aren’t difficult enough for most fourteen-year-old girls, Mira’s journey to adulthood is infinitely more complicated by the existential need to free herself from her abusive stepfather and her desire to remain close to her mother and sister. Taisya Kalinina delivers a nuanced performance that beautifully embodies the joy, confusion, and trauma of Mira’s life.
Jealous that Mira is devoting her attention to Dani, Vera chastises her and kicks her out of the party. Chasing her into the stairwell, Dani attempts to charm Mira into more physical intimacy, promising she can escape with him and that he would do anything for her. Mira takes the latter declaration seriously and asks if he would kill for her. Dani plays along briefly with what he thinks is her joke until it becomes clear that Mira is dead serious. Spooked, he calls her crazy and returns to the party, seeking solace in another girl’s arms. Dani’s rejection combined with the alcohol she has consumed pushes her to the brink. She returns to the apartment and escalates conflict with her friends, eventually throwing a lit firecracker into the living room and climbing over the balcony ledge to threaten suicide. Her friends rescue her, dragging her into the apartment and comfort her as she collapses on the floor, the disco ball refracting disorienting, swirling lights around her. In the morning, a visibly shaken Lera and her brother walk her home, handing the bedraggled Mira back to her stepfather, no wiser about the profound secret that motivated their friend’s erratic behavior.
In the only scene of the film that confirms the dark secret Mira is carrying, she is woken later that morning by Andrei’s touches and enticement to intimacy. Disoriented and angry, dread permeating her face, she resists him, batting him away and pleading with him to leave. He does not and proceeds to rape her, with her tear-stained face buried in her pillow. As the diegetic sound captures Andrei’s grunts and moans, the camera depicts Mira’s process of disassociating from her reality, what Zara Abdullaeva (2023) describes as her desire simply “not to be.” The couch on which she was sleeping physically sucks her in, the cushions slowly closing around her until she disappears as we hear Andrei climaxing off screen. Cutting back to reality, Andrei pats Mira on the back and, playing the doting father, tucks her gently under the covers. This visual representation of Mira’s mental survival mechanism of disassociation is exceptionally powerful and captures in a compelling way her feelings of wanting to vanish, to literally be swallowed up into the furniture rather than be present for this violation.
The final scene of the film returns to the family idyll. Mira places the cheery flower window clings she received as a New Year’s gift on the frosty glass panes in her bedroom. Her mother dotes on her, attempting to elicit gossip about the party and promising to devote the day to doing something fun with Mira. The teenager, appearing more childlike than previously, leans into her mother, seemingly willing her to ask what is wrong, to voice the secret that lurks beneath the surface, to protect her. It is never clear if Mira’s mother suspects her husband’s actions, but it seems impossible that this seemingly devoted mother could be completely oblivious to the abuse, given the close living quarters and palpable tension between her daughter and Andrei. This moment of connection between the two is visibly moving to Mira who seems on the verge of tears in the warm embrace of her mother as she covers her with kisses and calls her endearing little names. Despite the looming domestic duties awaiting her, the mother promises to take Mira and the baby sledding for a few hours, a plan that seems to please the teen. The film ends with Mira staring warily out her window as snow “dances” outside, seemingly contemplating the reality that the new year will not bring hope or escape for her but that she will remain trapped in the confines of her typical little family in this average apartment building.
Emily Schuckman Matthews
San Diego State University
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Works Cited
Abdullaeva, Zara. 2023. “Korotkii fil’m o nasilii: ‘Odin malen’kii nochnoi sekret’ Natal’i Meshchaninovoi.” Iskusstvo kino, 1 January.
Guseva, N., 2023. ‘Delat’ kino seichas—eto plavat’ v solianoi kislote’: kak rabotaet fond ‘Kinopraim’. Kinopoisk, 6 October.
Kobzeva, E., 2023. “Rezhisser Nataliia Meshchaninova o nasilii nad det’mi v sem’e: ‘eto proiskhodit slishkom chasto’.” 78.ru, 5 July.
Meshchaninova, N., 2017. Rasskazy. St Petersburg: Seans.
Romodanovskaia, Nina. 2023. “Nataliia Meshchaninova: Posle pakazov ‘Odin malen’kii nochnoi sekret’ vsekh interesovalo, otkudo poiavilas’ ideia proekta.” Proficinema, 14 July.
My Little Nighttime Secret, Russia, 2023
Color, 90 minutes
Director: Nataliia Meshchaninova
Screenwriter: Nataliia Meshchaninova
DoP: Artem Emel’ianov
Production Design: Ol’ga Khlebnikova, Iuliia Komynina
Editing: Dasha Danilova
Cast: Stepan Devonin, Taisya Kalinina, Elena Plaksina, Margarita Silaeva, Oleg Savostiuk
Producer: Sergei Selianov, Natalia Drozd
Production: CTB Film Company, KinoPrime
Nataliia Meshchaninova: My Little Nighttime Secret (Odin malen’kii nochnoi sekret, 2023) reviewed by Emily Schuckman Matthews © 2025 |