Limonov: The Ballad

Italy, France, Spain, 2023,138 min.
Director: Kirill Serebrennikov
Screenplay: Pawel Pawlikowski, Ben Hopkins, Kirill Serebrennikov

Cast: Ben Whishaw, Viktoria Miroshnichenko, Tomas Arana, Masha Mashkova, Odin Lund Biron , Sandrine Bonnaire

A revolutionary militant, a thug, an underground writer, a butler to a millionaire in Manhattan.
But also a switchblade waving poet, a lover of beautiful women, a warmonger, a political agitator and a novelist who wrote of his own greatness. Eduard Limonov’s life story is a journey through Russia, America and Europe during the second half of the 20th century.

Peter Bradshaw:

Eduard Limonov’s bizarre career, from rebel émigré writer in New York to leader of a fascistic, militaristic political group, is told with gusto by Kirill Serebrennikov.

Kirill Serebrennikov directs with terrific gusto, from a script adapted from the novel by Emmanuel Carrère.

Fascism, punk, euphoria and despair … it’s all here, or mostly, in this hilarious biopic of Eduard Limonov, the rock’n’roll émigré Russian writer and patriot-dissident. Limonov  became an angry bohemian, a sexual outlaw and a celebrated adulte terrible in French literary circles in the 80s, railing against the prissy liberals and mincing hypocrites. Then he returned to Russia and became the leader of a violent group called the National Bolshevik Party.

But the film is very funny on the subject of writers’ obsessive and envious awareness of other writers’ successes. Most of them keep it to themselves, but not Limonov.

Sex is politics and politics is sex in Kirill Serebrennikov’s recklessly beautiful, wildly entertaining English-language debut “Limonov: The Ballad.” This punk rock epic moves at the pace of a train coming off its tracks across Moscow, New York, Paris, and back to Russia again, starring Ben Whishaw in a career-crowning lead performance as the self-styled alternative poet and political dissident Eduard Limonov

Original Language: English