From script to film: Renata Litvinova’s Non-Love and Valerii Rubinchik’s film

Abstract

ABSTRACTRenata Litvinova’s first feature script Non-Love establishes a key feature of her writing: the conflict encapsulated in the heroine’s character. This is emphasised by the manner of the speech deployed by the scriptwriter. This article proposes a comparative analysis of the script and the film made by Valerii Rubinchik in 1991. The director’s interpretation leads to the reduction of dialogues and the heroine’s monologue; the introduction of a character-forming approach through the use of documentary footage of Marilyn Monroe; and a different interaction between the characters and the spectator than in Litvinova’s script. The filmmaker Rubinchik reconstructs the heroine, removing not only the conflict from within her, but also changing the genre. Drawing a parallel between the heroine and Monroe, who serves as a role model, the director narrows the problem that in the script is metaphysical to a melodramatic issue. The existential choice that the heroine faces in the script turns in the film into a choice between the two characters of a love triangle within conventions of the melodrama. The changes in the heroine’s idiosyncratic speech patterns rendering the inner conflicts are in line with genre conventions by emphasising the heroine’s infantilism.