KUKOLKA is one of the most intense, disturbing films I've ever seen.Even considering it as belonging roughly to the teen-movie genre of the late 1980s, it's a stunner. I watched it with amazement, then shock, then with mounting horror until the ending, which appalled me. Then I watched it again. I go back and check out sequences in it, watching the framing and narrative, which consists of rather tedious but psychologically intense conversations and exchanges, some almost completely wordless, broken by sudden bursts of activity and blunt violence.The opening scenes of the excitement and glory, combined with (at the time) incredible privileges of foreign travel and expensive, cool stuff, are effective at creating a world. When it stops suddenly, the feeling of a lurching fall is palpable, and as the Little Doll turns out to be psychologically formed in ways guaranteed to make her life a living hell, the film rides out in the only way it can. The ending is ugly.The thing that strikes me the most is Zasypkina's performance, which is very, very good. It's close to unique. I don't believe I've ever seen anything quite like it. Due to, I imagine, her career in gymnastics which taught her to have total control of her body, Zasypkina turns in a character of such singularity she totally dominates the screen. It's a compact, powerhouse performance by, well, a compact powerhouse.The explosive physicality of the former gymnast completely sells the central theme of a lost person with nowhere to go with their competitive aggression. Scenes of the girl terrorizing fellow students are both frighteningly believable and unbearably sad. A scene of her brutally and with no warning dropping a guy twice her size with a single punch dropped my jaw, but I believed it.I wonder that Zasypkina didn't do more acting work; her physicality makes her a formidable screen presence despite (or because of?) her diminutive size. I would completely buy her as a Bond antagonist. Since I ran across the movie from a link to a gymnastics blog, I learned Zasypkina won't even watch gymnastics on TV, and has busied herself with other things. I can't help but wonder what she's doing now; she'd be almost 40.You should seek out and watch this film.

"Kukolka" (Little doll) is a little gem of the Soviet Cinema, set in the momentous history-changing time - the late 1980s - during perestroika, glasnost and the last years of the Soviet Union. The heroine, 16 year old ex-world champion gymnast, is powerfully played by real-life master of sport Svetlana Zasypkina, on whose life the film is loosely based. We see how she spent 10 years of her childhood training tirelessly 8 hours a day under pressure to secure medals and victories for her country, and what it meant. When her injury means she must abandon sport her sporting dreams and everything she has worked for are shattered and she faces a grey, harsh reality of living in a small provincial city trying to fit in the school among students, who, being products of Soviet collective-spirit education, unlike her, are not used to freedom of expression and challenging authority. Being a fighter and a very strong character, she wins over those who initially taunted her out of jealousy or because they were bullied to. Yet the head teacher continues to attempt to make her subordinate, something that is not in her nature. At a time when a Walkman, a VHS player, a nice television set, being driven in a car were still a novelty, seeing how classroom "herd"'s respect were "won" by these things is revealing. On a human level the psychological portrayal of the girls relationship with her mother, peers and the teachers is honest and realistic. This is a multi-layer, penetrating, psychological, tense and honest drama about an individual in a society where expression of individuality was not encouraged, about the shattering of dreams, standing up for yourself against bullies, about teenagers and authority, the "herd mentality", the film portrays how the old school system was bursting at the seams amidst the oncoming irreversible changes in society. Excellently made, superbly played, highly recommended.

"Kukolka" tells the story of a young Russian gymnastics star who is forced to return to the life of an ordinary teenage girl after an injury prevents her from competing. As the film unfolds, the audience is drawn into the damaged psyche of the girl and the world that shaped her. The story is dark, intense, and ultimately disquieting; it draws you in, horrifies you, and keeps you thinking long after the superb finale. A film that is difficult to forget.