James R | On 10, Apr 2022

Director: Juho Kuosmanen
Cast: Seidi Haarla, Yuriy Borisov
Certificate: 15

There’s something romantic about long-distance train travel, in the magic of going to sleep in one place and waking up in the next, with only the rumble of the rails to give you a clue that you’re on wheels. In the case of young Finnish woman Laura (Seidi Haarla), she also has the presence of another traveller to remind her: a construction worker called Ljoha (Yuriy Borisov), who’s about as unromantic as it gets. Compartment No 6 joins the pair as they trundle towards their destination in the Artic Circle, and it’s a wonderfully engrossing journey.

Laura is travelling from Moscow to Murmansk, where she wants to visit a site of ancient petroglyphs. She’s encouraged to do so by her lover, Irina (Dinara Drukarova), who was going to embark on the voyage with her. When her plans change, out goes Irina and in her place is Ljoha, who is heading to the port town for work. He wonders if she is also plying a trade of another type – and that remark swiftly gets them off on the wrong foot.

Except, as the claustrophobic carriage carries them on rails, a perhaps predictable track also emerges, as the two strangers begin to find common ground. While that sounds familiar, it’s the joy of watching that well-trod path unfold that makes each step forward entertaining and quietly moving. Seidi Haarla is brilliant as the aspiring academic, teasing out a surprising loneliness and isolation that it turns out dates from before the departure of her solo trip. Yuriy Borisov, meanwhile, is superb as the gruff man with a vulnerability lurking beneath his booze-and-cigarettes surface. Together, they deftly modulate from tension to consideration, from awkward otherness to kind solidarity.

Finnish director Juho Kuosmanen, who previously gave us the charming boxing drama The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki, delivers another knockout gem here, once again able to duck and weave through notes of melancholy and warmth to craft a bittersweet story of human connection recalls the intimate honesty of Before Sunrise, but has a momentum and drive all its own.

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