You probably need to be Russian to be able to fully unpack the layers of satire and allegory in this defiantly oddball tale of personal growth. But the impact of the sheer weirdness of a story of a middle-aged zoo worker who grows a tail is universal. Natasha (Natalya Pavlenkova) is frumpy and unprepossessing, the butt of cruel jokes from her colleagues and the subject of a lifetime of nagging attrition from her mother. The tail that she grows – unexplained by the film or by the medical professionals she visits – is hairless, pink and obscenely phallic. It offers, however, an escape from the dour grey of Natasha’s life. She enters into a relationship with a younger doctor who seems to be attracted to her just as she is. She sails through the swirling superstitions and rumours about a local “demon woman” with her freshly coiffed head aloft, exuding newfound confidence. Unfortunately, the self-belief seems to be more closely linked to the boyfriend than to the tail, a depressingly prosaic conclusion to a pleasingly unconventional story.
