Alisa Freindlich

The wife objects to the guide’s work in Stalker (1979), and Alisa Freindlich makes us take her seriously. She makes that objection count without turning it into another discussion of belief. We felt her frustration because she gives it a practical force that the more philosophical exchanges sometimes lack. This is where we find her most persuasive: playing someone whose feelings deserve attention even when the film has other things it wants to discuss.

Her film work became prominent in the mid-1970s, building on substantial theatre experience. Eldar Ryazanov’s Office Romance (1977) gives her a leading comic role as Lyudmila Prokofyevna Kalugina, drawing on her timing and authority. It is worth keeping that performance in mind when approaching the solemnity of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker. The everyday realism associated with her acting has a use in both kinds of film, and her comic work deserves attention alongside the demanding drama.

There are limits to what she can help with in Stalker, where Anatoly Solonitsyn’s Writer and Mykola Hrynko’s Professor sometimes keep talking after a point has been made. The writing can leave them with a subject but too little sense of why either man needs to discuss it. Freindlich cannot cure that heaviness. She does give us a reason to question the guide’s commitment without adding another philosophical exchange. She is one reason we warmly recommend the film, though its longer discussions still try our patience.

She worked with Ryazanov again as Ogudalova in Ruthless Romance (1984), his adaptation of Ostrovsky, while theatre remained central to her work. Later screen appearances became occasional alongside her continuing stage career. Her standing as a theatre actress should not make those screen parts seem like incidental work. Start with Stalker if its slow pace appeals, then try Office Romance for her comic timing.