Minor People

Vera house-sits an uncompleted mansion in an upscale part of Odesa where the recently affluent are relocating. When her roommate creates a scene, Vera calls for help from Vasia, a district doctor who happens to be passing by. In trying to calm her agitated partner with a gasoline canister, the doctor accidentally kills him. Vera and the doctor decide to dispose of the body within a suitcase, when the mansion’s owner returns, only to be preoccupied with settling a score with his ex-fellow schoolteacher, now a killer. Filmed during a time when Ukraine’s first wave of nouveau riche was emerging, Kira Muratova’s absurdist sitcom is driven by bizarre antics and repetitious, exaggerated speech to parody the flamboyant and unpredictable, forming what Muratova referred to as a psychocomedy.