When I am scared I make things up
As she approaches forty and emerges from depression, Sasha becomes haunted by the fear of growing old and dying alone. In anxious reenactments, she imagines herself as a giant, faceless old body awaiting absurd deaths: crushed by a ceiling, eaten by her cats, or drowned in the bathtub.
Seeking a more rational ending, Sasha visits a nursing home, where she meets Vera, 90, placed there against her will. Refusing to surrender to life there, Vera escapes into a romance with Erlan, 65, ignoring his coldness and cruelty.
Sasha asks Vera to rehearse her future admission and teach her how to survive there. Vera agrees, then stops, outraged by Sasha's fantasies. Vera's vitality and desire for love despite her age prompt Sasha to take off the old-body costume. In autofictional reenactments, she revisits her own awkward, painful and absurd relationships with men.
As Erlan's abuse worsens, Sasha offers Vera her own coping mechanism: inventing another reality and acting it out together. Vera imagines not catastrophes but a better life-reuniting with her first love, Imant, after sixty years, or sailing on an oligarch's yacht in a golden dress. In another autofictional reenactment, Sasha reconnects with a former classmate -her own “Imant"-but the date ends in disaster.
Sasha asks Vera to imagine one more fantasy: a happy life without a man. Vera replies she would be "an empty space." Sasha returns to her empty apartment; Vera returns to Erlan.
When he humiliates her again, Vera finally resists. With death close, age becomes freedom: "Now I can do whatever I want." In her final fantasy, she raises her middle finger, finds a hidden door and disappears.
Sasha stops looking for proof that her fears will come true. Turning to her female friends, she imagines aging together in a Boston marriage. She cannot escape death, but begins to imagine a future in which she will not face it alone.
Seeking a more rational ending, Sasha visits a nursing home, where she meets Vera, 90, placed there against her will. Refusing to surrender to life there, Vera escapes into a romance with Erlan, 65, ignoring his coldness and cruelty.
Sasha asks Vera to rehearse her future admission and teach her how to survive there. Vera agrees, then stops, outraged by Sasha's fantasies. Vera's vitality and desire for love despite her age prompt Sasha to take off the old-body costume. In autofictional reenactments, she revisits her own awkward, painful and absurd relationships with men.
As Erlan's abuse worsens, Sasha offers Vera her own coping mechanism: inventing another reality and acting it out together. Vera imagines not catastrophes but a better life-reuniting with her first love, Imant, after sixty years, or sailing on an oligarch's yacht in a golden dress. In another autofictional reenactment, Sasha reconnects with a former classmate -her own “Imant"-but the date ends in disaster.
Sasha asks Vera to imagine one more fantasy: a happy life without a man. Vera replies she would be "an empty space." Sasha returns to her empty apartment; Vera returns to Erlan.
When he humiliates her again, Vera finally resists. With death close, age becomes freedom: "Now I can do whatever I want." In her final fantasy, she raises her middle finger, finds a hidden door and disappears.
Sasha stops looking for proof that her fears will come true. Turning to her female friends, she imagines aging together in a Boston marriage. She cannot escape death, but begins to imagine a future in which she will not face it alone.