My husband is a man who collects things he can use. A pistol, a pocket-watch, a woman's love, a wife....
I'm obsessed with That Scene(tm) between Katya and Andrei in the California Director's Cut Rerelease of Goncharov, so I did a lighting study inspired by the film's Art Deco Posters! Little details like Katya never referring to her husband by his first name really add to Andrey and Katya's tense dynamic, which is one of the most underrated parts of the movie imo.
the way Katya’s lipstick stained Sofia’s lips like when Sofia’s wine stained Katya’s dress and how later they are both stained in blood screaming crying throwing up
ok but i cannot stop thinking about the IMPLICATIONS of the final scene with katya and sofia. katya is an immigrant. she left her homeland with goncharov when she was sixteen. she took on his name, his business, his sins for twenty years. by the end of the movie, everyone she knows and loves outside of goncharov's ring of destruction is either dead or wants nothing more to do with her.
sofia was meant to end katya: her relationship with goncharov, her place in goncharov's business, her life. goncharov let sofia into their lives to make katya jealous, to amplify katya's insecurities so that katya would stay loyal to him. and then we find out that sofia was literally sent to kill them. to end the goncharovs not only in the figurative sense but the literal one.
but she can't do it, so she leaves. now what does katya have left? who is she even anymore? she's not a goncharov; she destroyed that part of her when she betrayed him. she's not ekaterina, the name her mother gave her, the name she bore when she was a scared little girl: that person died a long time ago. this movie is so special because the female side character has her own journey that mirrors the main character's: your old self is dead. who is your new self?
so she goes to paris, to be with sofia. sofia, the woman who was meant to destroy her. and she lets it happen. she lets sofia destroy katya goncharova. her old self is dead. and she is finally free :')
I'm seeing so many posts about Goncharov 1973, but where's the love for the 1968 novel Katya, Forgotten that inspired it? I know it's not a very well-known piece of literature, and Matteo made up a solid 70% of the plotline, but a good portion of the Goncharov's backstory present in the movie is from this book! Yeah, the Italy stuff is new to the film, but Katya's entire life up to the wedding is laid out in the novel, and it's tragic that people aren't even mentioning it.
That said, Katya, Forgotten is a then-modern AU expansion of the 1842 novella Daughter of the Jewels, but that one has basically no connection to the movie, and even the influence on Katya, Forgotten isn't common knowledge, so I guess that's more understandable.