On May 4, the erotic mini-series 'Desperate Bride' premiered on the KION online cinema. The story of a woman trying over five episodes to marry anyone and make a documentary about it looks funny in 2023, but not in the way the creators intended.

This year, the streaming company MTS is trying to regularly delight viewers with new, diverse content for almost every taste. Do you like psychological detective stories? Here you go, 'God Complex'. Are biopics your thing? How about watching 'Ranevskaya'? Feel like a laugh? Go ahead and watch the second season of 'Omar in the Big City'. Need some mysticism? The catalog has 'Sergiy vs. Evil Spirits. Sabbath'.

And now an erotic comedy for an adult audience has appeared, titled 'Desperate Bride'. This is a mini-series of five twenty-minute episodes released all on the same day. Formally, the project could be considered a two-hour film, but that wouldn't make it any better. The creators could have made a frank and powerful story, filled with mature, intelligent humor, but instead, it turned out to be a banal and vulgar comedy, of which there are countless, and for that, as they say at weddings, it's bitter.

What's the Plot?

The main character is 33-year-old Alisa (Anna Zaitseva), who finds out that her boyfriend — a married American teacher, Lucas (Pierre Burel) — not only doesn't plan to divorce his wife for her but has also fathered a third child. The woman gave five years of her life to this scoundrel, and he fed her stories about the difficulties of divorce, enjoying female affection away from his family. Alisa returns to her mother's (Yulia Aug) apartment and, naturally, gets a scolding mixed with lectures about how much time has been wasted, the years are passing, and her daughter has neither a husband nor a home. She didn't get married (and after 30 it's much harder), she didn't work in her profession, she's messing around with some nonsense at her film school, there's no stability, and she doesn't even have a place to live.

Of course, Alisa doesn't like hearing unpleasant things about herself, so she makes a bet with her mother: within a year, she will find a suitable life partner, and on top of that, she'll make a documentary about it that will definitely get into a film festival and bring the creator money and awards, and Lucas will realize what he missed and be taught a lesson. If the daughter fails to meet the conditions, she will have to have children with her best friend, who also happens to be her mother's friend's son — Pasha (Vasily Mikhailov). And now the desperate bride must find not just a good husband, but also an interesting character for her course project.

The Clock is Ticking

Marriage is considered an extremely important stage in a woman's life, which is why many fairy tales end with a wedding and the motto 'happily ever after'. And not just fairy tales. Also films, books, and even multi-season series. There is an opinion that it's better to get married before the 'terrible' milestone of 30, because after that it turns into a mission with a helicopter from 'GTA: Vice City', that is, an extremely difficult task. But is it really that important for a modern woman to acquire the status of someone's wife? How relevant is the stereotype about the ticking clock today?

Judging by the number of projects coming out on this topic, it is still firmly entrenched in people's minds, but many modern women no longer dream only of marriage in life. Today, self-realization, public recognition, and equality are more important to them. Life no longer revolves around princes and breadwinners, and 'snagging a good man' is far from the main goal, so making the search for a husband the central motivation of the heroine is a rather dubious idea. The second dubious idea is adding attempts to find oneself and self-realize to this 'search', because in the end, 'Desperate Bride' couldn't maintain a balance between these two extremes.

In the series, Anna Zaitseva plays the role of an offended, stupid, and naive woman who was deceived by a married scoundrel. On top of that, her own mother adds to the tension, and childhood traumas also make themselves felt, so Alisa's main goal becomes the task of getting married. Throughout all five episodes, she actively tries on options, both emotionally and physically (there are simply no episodes without sex), but in the process, it becomes clear that her love for cinema and desire for self-realization still prevail over the social stereotype about marriage. Stop. Or not. Is finding love more important? In short, neither the promiscuous sexual relationships nor the endless reshoots of the documentary provided an answer. It seems each viewer must answer for themselves.

It's funny that at 33 years old, our desperate bride behaves like a teenager going through puberty. The offended Alisa tells Lucas where to go with his offers of help, because she must prove to him that she can make a worthwhile project even without the smug American. All this pride ends exactly the moment the 'cherished' letter about expulsion from film school arrives. After it, the student immediately dials the teacher's number, hoping for that very help that her ex-lover repeatedly offered.

That's it, no more grudges, and pride is shoved where the heroine told Lucas to go. Alisa is even ready to jump back into bed with him. Besides this, she lives at Pasha's place for free, constantly uses him (and not only him), reproaches him, teaches him about life, and generally behaves extremely selfishly. How to empathize with such a character is an open question.

Ideally, Alisa should be looking not for a husband, but for a good psychotherapist who would work through all her problems with her and help her sort out the mess in her life and head. But instead of a psychologist, there's her father, who abandoned her as a child, onto whom she offloads all her grievances and problems. In her opinion, he is the culprit of all her troubles, so the man appears for two minutes and explains life to his daughter, and she finally understands everything. Well, let's note down a life hack on how to save a ton of money on psychotherapy.

Tili-tili Dough

'Desperate Bride' is an erotic comedy. And while the project more than lives up to the word 'erotic', there are definite problems with the 'comedy'. Almost all the jokes here are 'below the belt', which makes it more sad than funny, because an adult audience doesn't always want to giggle at gags with sexual overtones. If the project had been filled with truly good and subtle humor, it would have been much better and more interesting, but alas, we have what we're given. And what they give here is in every episode.

As for the eroticism, you could say they even overdid it a bit. The heroine has sex with each of her 'candidates' in every episode. Over the course of two hours, the number of sex scenes exceeds the norm. They are, of course, shot amazingly and realistically, but their abundance makes it awkward. Alisa is sexualized in every possible way. No questions there, Anna Zaitseva is a beautiful woman, but why constantly emphasize her breasts? What emotions should the scene of the heroine walking with her bouncing forms filling the screen, shot in slow motion, evoke? By the way, these questions can be addressed to Anna herself, as she is the director.

If anyone is wondering why I'm only talking about breasts, since there's another body part that is commonly shown in erotic films, I'll answer: butts also flash on screen constantly here, but only male ones. Almost every character who slept with Alisa showed off their rear end, because you have to justify the stated 'eroticism'. All these complaints about on-screen nudity are by no means based on the idea that nudity shouldn't be shown in cinema. It can be, and sometimes even should be, but only if it's appropriate, and not just inserted to attract attention. Do the creators really think that the needs of the 18+ audience today consist of such requests?

One gets the feeling that 'Desperate Bride' was made not for mature adult viewers, but for teenagers who are not very interested in the plot and characters, but really enjoy flat jokes and sex on screen. The mini-series resembles plot-driven porn from which all the most interesting parts, the reason people skip to the middle, have been cut out, because there are no particularly memorable characters (perhaps except for Alisa's mother's suitor, Viktor Borisovich (Igor Chernevich), and the extreme sports enthusiast with a disability, Danya (Ivan Mulin), who manage to shine in the small amount of screen time they're given), there are no standout acting performances, the direction is quite functional, the script is banal, and the ending is predictable and not exactly happy.

What's the Verdict?

'Desperate Bride' is far from the best project in the KION online cinema catalog. It is bold and frank, but weak in terms of plot, which is why it loses to many competitors in the niche of erotic cinema. When creators decide to tread on such shaky ground, they need to understand that a balance between explicit content and plot is of paramount importance. These two elements should complement each other so that the result is good, unembarrassing material.

It's a shame that nowadays projects with the word 'erotic' can easily be equated with outright vulgarity, as many fail to grasp the fine line between them. If a modern adult wants vulgarity, they can easily go to the orange-and-black 'YouTube' or uncheck the 'Safe Search' box in 'VKontakte', rather than watch a show akin to 'Naked and Funny', where you won't get a laugh or relax.