In the age of streaming slop designed to appeal to as many people mid-Instagram-scroll as possible, there’s something wonderful about a film that’s not afraid to embrace its specificity.
Writer Nastasya Popov’s directorial debut, Idiotka, stars Anna Baryshnikov as Margarita, an aspiring fashion designer who goes on a Project Runway-style reality show called Slay, Serve, Survive in order to keep her Russian Jewish family housed in their West Hollywood apartment. (Margarita’s work—for which Popov’s sister Mia Kazovsky, co-founder of the LA-based brand Mimchik, served as a consultant—marries post-Soviet kitsch with a runway-ready edge, calling to mind the real-life work of Russian designer Roma Uvarov.) The end result is unique and delightful; simply put, it’s a movie for the girls who try to tie a scarf around their heads like Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, but end up looking more like a Soviet propaganda poster.
There’s Margarita’s recovering-alcoholic dad bringing her plates of cut-up сливы (plums) as she sews; her musician brother’s simple response to being interrogated about whether he’s gay or not (“Da”); and her grandmother (fabulously brought to life by Galina Jovovich) smoking in bed as she rues her lung cancer diagnosis. While Idiotka’s stacked supporting cast—including Julia Fox, Owen Thiele, Benito Skinner, Saweetie, and Camila Mendes—seems destined to make its clips go TikTok-viral, it’s when the film zeroes in on Margarita’s stubborn and inconvenient love for her less-than-perfect family that it truly shines.
“I learned so much about myself through this movie,” says Baryshnikov, herself the daughter of ballet dancers Mikhail Baryshnikov and Lisa Rinehart. “I actually grew up very American. My dad defected and didn’t have a big Russian community that I grew up around, and my mom’s side of the family is from Ohio and Maine, so I knew a lot more about them. But at the same time, we ate at the Russian Samovar in New York every week, and through working on Idiotka, I think I realized how many cultural things about my life had actually been so Russian and Slavic.”
To prepare for her role as an emerging designer, Baryshnikov read Vivienne Westwood’s memoir and spent a lot of time browsing Depop. “I think there’s this amazing explosion of people wearing archival vintage, which Julia Fox has really helped to inspire,” Baryshnikov observes. “But making this movie also reminded me to support designers at the beginning of their careers and find people I feel strongly about early.” (She counts Lein, Kallmeyer, and Khaite among her favorite labels at the moment.)
Following a Wednesday-night screening at the historic Los Feliz 3 Theatre in Los Angeles, silk scarves—or babushkas—bearing the film’s name were on offer at the after-party in Silver Lake hosted by executive producer Jack Defuria, alongside readily mixed martinis and yuzu margaritas meant to reference Idiotka’s heroine. (She is, of course, named for the protagonist of Elena S. Bulgakova and Mikhail Bulgakov’s landmark Soviet novel The Master and Margarita, but her hot, dumb situationship assumes it’s a reference to the alcoholic beverage.)
No less a local film authority than Kristen Stewart, the moderator of the screening’s cast discussion, could be seen among the revelers; also, a group of enterprising young men by the DJ booth who tied their babushkas around their heads and popped baseball caps over them. That Muscovite-street-style realness felt like the perfect nod to Idiotka’s ethos: take the old, top it with the new, and for the love of God, don’t forget to serve your heart out.
