Promise

“Remember the days when we buried people one by one and made a fuss about
it?” So says the 17-year-old boy in Alexi Arbuzov‘s tale of love under
fire. The Promise is all about the dreams of youth, even in the most dire circumstances, and the promise of a better tomorrow.

It’s Leningrad, 1942, a city under siege. A young man, Marat, returns to his
tiny bedsit to find a squatter. She is Lika, and according to Marat ‘lucky’
to have survived so far without him, so the two set about forging an
existence amid the air raids in the derelict building. They are soon joined
by Leonidik, and the displaced teenagers become a surrogate family unit. But
three’s a crowd, and although it’s clear Marat and Lika are in love, he
leaves to join up and Leonidik shortly follows, out of obligation. So the
love triangle begins and we watch the developments in 1946 as the war ends,
when Marat returns a hero, Leonidik with only one arm and finally in 1959.

Nick Dean‘s adaptation does well to include modern idiom with ease. While
the mis en scène, courtesy of Bunny Christie is incredibly atmospheric and informative for each different ‘time’. Director Nicholas Kent chooses to
punctuate the scenes with short contemporary film montages, again perfectly
evoking the age.

The performances are adequate from the trio of young actors who admirably try to
depict the massive emotional development and scope their characters cover
over 30 years. But despite an A for effort, they do not always succeed. Paul Nicholls is watchable,
but lacks the charisma necessary to carry off the idealist hero Marat
convincingly; while both Jenny Jones and Gyuri Sarossy are solid as Lika and
Leonidik respectively, but they paint with too-broad strokes characters that
need finer shading.

If the story is about hope, then it is only hope for the men. They both love Lika
but she becomes a slave to both – for one, as a wife and nurse, for the other a
fantasy. Even when her true love returns, there’s little sense
that anything will change, and the dreams of youth seem to be forever
elusive.

Ultimately you’re left feeling confused, empty, and slightly
betrayed by The Promise which is never quite fulfilled.

– Hannah Khalil