Embarrassed at first, Natasha decides to go further with the transformation and use it as an opportunity to redefine herself as a person and as a woman. With the new 'accessory' she gets access to the life that she has never experienced before - she starts a relationship with a man, who finds her attractive, she goes out and allows herself to be foolish for the first time in her life. But her second puberty eventually comes to an end and Natasha has to make a choice between reality and illusion.
[A] combination of fairy-tale wonderment and stark realism propels this enthralling film, which showcases serious acting talent in its lead spot with relative newcomer Natalya Pavlenkova.
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.
While I would only recommend it to art-house enthusiasts due to its slow pace, it is refreshing to see a film that deals with body image from an older woman's point of view.
Any redemption in Zoology comes from the sheer accomplishment of Natalya Pavlenkova's playing. To explore such depths of pain is, perverse though it may seem, somehow to transcend them.
Zoology is a genuine oddity: bizarre, surprising and affecting. If it's meaning is muddled, Natasha Pavlenkova' s central turn makes the tale - and the tail - worthwhile.
[Pavlenkova's] acting is Zoology's sole redeeming point, which makes it all the more distasteful that all the plot developments, and the tentative love story in particular, are put in the service of the final twist.
There are strains of Gogol and Kafka in this intriguing if flawed movie from Russian director Ivan I Tverdovskiy, shot in a restless handheld style, the camera roaming and panning across a dreary workaday world.