Of Freaks and Men directed by Alexei Balabanov is a Russian 1998 film. The film in the beginning and near the end is initially black and white, but the majority of it is entirely sepia tone. It utilizes text to provide the audience background information that isn't explicitly shown. The film is so original and playful but border line overly crude which makes the film all the more disturbing. The film is set during the start of the 20th century in St. Petersburg centered around a widowed engineer named Radlov who lives with his daughter Liza and maid Grunia whose brother happens to be a pornographer name Johan. The blind woman Ekaterina and her adopted Siamese twins Kolya and Tolya also play a major role in the film, as their maid is a customer of Johan's pornography. Of Freaks and Men basically reveals that everyone is a "freak" not a single character is what you would call "innocent." The maid of the Siamese twins showing the children the pornography and have one of them touch her breast. The widowers daughter who isn't as innocently as he believes, he literally gets a heart attack when discovering the truth. The Siamese twins don't fall behind with one of them becoming an alcoholic and the other exposing his sexual desires to Liza. The connection between these two families is Johan being that the families are destroyed with his evil. You could possibly argue that the characters in this film were originally weak having already bizarre passions, which I would absolutely agree with.
Review of Of Freaks and Men
