Seidi Haarla in Compartment No. 6 (Sami Kuokkanen/Sony Pictures Classics)

“Everything seems to be so far away”

This is a reaction one traveler says to another, Laura (Seidi Haarla), commenting on her attempt to see ancient Russian stone carvings for which she has travelled a good way to visit: the Kanozero petroglyphs are located in the far north near the Barents Sea—it’s also the dead of winter.

The same sentiment could be said for Laura and her aforementioned cabin mate Ljoha (Yurij Borisov). They are cramped together in the second-class train compartment of the title for three days as they travel to the Arctic city of Murmansk. Laura, a university student, intends on seeing the aforementioned petroglyphs while Ljoha is on his way to work in one of Russia’s biggest mines in Murmansk. When asked why he has traveled so far for work, Ljoha responds, “For business.” When pushed by Laura to define what type of business, a flustered Ljoha replies, “I don’t know. Business!” While this may seem like the awkward beginning of a mismatched love story, it is somewhat more complicated than that. These characters are alienated from their environment and especially themselves.

When we first meet Laura, she is at a party in Moscow. The film opens on the back of her head, revealing a barely combed mass of red hair. We follow her from behind as she makes her way through the party until she finally sits down and we see her face. She is Finnish, speaking rusty Russian at a literary party thrown by her lover, Irina (Dinara Drukarova), and very much out of her depth. Irina, a professor, plays a game where she says a quote and the group has to figure out which literary figure first said it—a stranger corrects Laura’s pronunciation of a Russian poet. Within five minutes, it is clear how dissatisfied and displaced Laura is. She also documents everything on a camcorder (it’s set in the 1990s), an excellent way to distance oneself from what’s going on around you.

At the start of her long trek to the remote archaeological site, her introduction to Ljoha occurs in the train compartment, where he is belligerent and very drunk. After he accuses or mistakes her for being a prostitute and is borderline abusive, she escapes from the compartment, but there is literally no other berth available. Laura even enters the third-class sleeping compartment. Every bed is taken, so Laura reluctantly stays.

Director and co-writer Juho Kuosmanen, working from a novel by Rosa Liksom, gives Laura more of a backstory, so we are more closely aligned to her and her journey. He leaves Ljoha as more of a cipher. This puts us more off guard and adds to Laura’s sense of anxiety. Also, Ljoha really is obnoxious at first. It’s possible that as Ljoha is more humanized, one still can’t forget one’s initial impression. However, Laura is lonely, and lonely people make choices that maybe they normally wouldn’t.

Kuosmanen has made essentially a less romantic, more realistic Before Sunrise. There is nothing treacly about the steadily involving Compartment No. 6, and each chink in the characters’ prodigious armor is earned. The forced closeness allows the duo to reveal more to each other than expected, but Kuosmanen does not give you a straightforward ending. There is no grandstanding here. These are two young people uncomfortable in their skin attempting to relate and find something in each other they may need, even temporarily. A wry sense of humor also spackles over any rough spots, plot wise.

Also lending a hand is the superbly casual cinematography of J-P Passi. It has a tossed off quality, but the camerawork is clearly carefully thought out and choreographed to express the characters’ emotional state. Each shot has the feel and movement it needs. Laura is almost never framed beyond a medium shot in the first half. Passi focuses on her face, as if it’s floating disconnected from her body. Ljoha, though, is consistently shot from above, partly because he took the bottom bunk of the compartment but also because Laura clearly thinks he is beneath her—initially. Both Haarla and Borisov are superb. They work up a healthy chemistry together with a subtle, off-hand precision. It is a pleasure to watch them play off of each other.

Compartment No. 6 may be the first great surprise of 2022.