Author: Zehra Phelan

On the surface this bizarre little Russian film could be misinterpreted as a strange fetish tale about a woman with a tail – not just a tiny one like that of Jason Alexander’s in Shallow Hal, but a full-length animalistic tail, fleshy in colour and with a mind of its own. This emotive story ventures deeper than that. It’s a story of how single women of a certain age are perceived and the aching loneliness that envelopes its victim with the longing to just fit in.

Ambitiously, writer and director Ivan Tverdovsky has tenderly touched on the story of Natasha (Natalya Pavlenkova), a middle-aged, drably dressed woman who still lives at home with her overtly religious mother. Bullied at work by two women who are old enough to know better and should have left their mean girls spirit in the playground when they left school. When she faints at work, she is subjected to a number of hospital visits for x-rays on her tail, raising her hopes that she could finally be able to do something about the one thing that has impacted her sad and lonely life.