Down House (film)

Down House (Даун Хаус) is a 2001 Russian comedy-gross-out film by Roman Kachanov, a modern interpretation of the 1869 novel The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

The film received the Special Jury Prize at Kinotavr.

Premise
The plot is set in modern Moscow, probably in the second half of the 1990s, with "New Russians", Hummer H1 jeeps, bribery, violence, truckfuls of tinned stew as a dowry, and so on. The film is quite far from the novel's subject, but still keeps to the main storyline. It features Fyodor Bondarchuk as Myshkin, and a soundtrack by DJ Groove, one of the most popular Russian DJs (who appears in the film as a taxi driver).

In Russian, Даун (Down) primarily refers to a person with Down syndrome, or, colloquially, to anyone retarded or just stupid, so it is similar to Idiot; while Хаус (House) refers to House music, which is used extensively in the film. The name is also a reference to the tendency of Russian subcultures such as businessmen, hackers and hippies to make heavy use of words borrowed from English and transliterated into the Russian alphabet.

Cast

 * Fyodor Bondarchuk – Prince Myshkin
 * Ivan Okhlobystin – Parfyon Rogozhin
 * Anna Buklovskaya – Nastasya Filippovna
 * Aleksandr Bashirov – Ferdyshchenko
 * Mikhail Vladimirov – Ganya Ivolgin
 * Jerzy Stuhr – General Ivolgin (voiced by Valentin Smirnitsky)
 * Valentina Sharykina – general's wife Ivolgina
 * Galina Kashkovskaya – Varya Ivolgina
 * Juozas Budraitis – General Epanchin (voiced by Boris Khimichev)
 * Barbara Brylska – general's wife Epanchina
 * Elena Kotelnikova – Aglaya Epanchina
 * Artemy Troitsky – Totsky