Three teenage girls face boys, parties, school, and their social environment in modern-day Russia.
Everybody Dies But Me, a 2008 film by Russian director Valeria Gai-Germanika, depicts the lives of three teenage girls on their quest for boys, drinks, and dance clubs. It peers into their homes and classrooms, and observes them at their most vulnerable.
The film caused something of a public outcry due to its highly emotional portrayal of lost teenagers pitted against a seemingly one-sided, malevolent social environment. Elements of the film – such as a raw, voyeuristic sex scene and painful displays of psychological and physical violence among teenagers – have, indeed, rarely been addressed in new Russian cinema. Germanika's film is a window onto the dirty, tear-filled lives of three young people, and it rarely preaches or points fingers.
Given its theme and the social sphere of its heroes, the film works perfectly as an excursion into teenage slang. For one thing, these girls use exclusively teenage substitutions of common words, such as “шмотки/shmotki” (stuff) for “clothes” or “бухло/buchló” (booze). They also use words stemming solely from teenage slang, such as “капец/kapéts” (a signal of surprise or indication of a bad situation), which substitutes the more vulgar “пиздец/pizdéts;” or “офигенно/afigénno!” (awesome!), which is also a linguistic substitute for the much more vulgar “охуенно/akhuénno!”
The shortened pronunciation of certain words is also heavily used. Thus, in daily speech, “что/shto” (what?) often becomes “чё/chyo,” “вообще/vobshhé” ("actually" or "really") becomes “ваще/vashhé,” and “слышишь/slyshysh?” (you hear?) is abbreviated to “слышь/slysh.” Lastly, the speech of the film’s heroes brims with filler words, comparable to the English "like" and "you know." The most commonly used ones here are “короче/karótshe” (in short) and “блин/blin” (literally "pancake," and a phonetically similar alternative to the vulgar “блядь/blyad,” which literally means "whore" and is also used as filler).
One notices that actual swear words are hardly used or substituted for less vulgar alternatives. Only at the very end of the film, confronting her parents after having been severely beaten by a schoolmate, does one of the heroines break down and swear, using truly explicit language. One can imagine how uncomfortable this closing scene was to conservative audiences in a country where the government is presently working towards fully banning profanities from art.
After the success of this film, Germanika directed the acclaimed TV series School (Shkola), which aired on national television and was followed by heavy conservative criticism, allegations of "untruthful" realism, and an unwarranted pessimistic view of the Russian educational system. The series is more of an absorbing character study, showing a wide palette of Russian teenage groups and giving the viewer extensive access to various kinds of youth slang. If one likes Germanika's storytelling style in Everyone Dies But Me, Shkola could be even more insightful, if time-consuming, viewing.
