In Firebird, a gay love affair leads to sorrow, tragedy and too much melodrama
Soviet soldiers launch a dangerous romance in an unconventional love story that’s conventionally told

If it achieves nothing else, director Peeter Rebane’s Firebird will have succeeded in shining a harsh light on the government-sponsored homophobia that has long marked Russia’s attitude towards homosexuality. In fact, Rebane had his choice of centuries in which to set his feature debut. Anytime between 1716, when Peter the Great made consensual sex between men in the army and navy punishable by flogging, and today, when homosexuality is legal but homophobia is rampant, would provide enough obstacles to sustain any drama. Rebane chose the Cold War ’70s and the story of Sergey and Roman, two real-life gay servicemen stationed at a Soviet Air Force base, whose clandestine relationship threatened to land them in prison for up to five years.
Rebane, an Estonian music video director and documentarian, tapped a powerful tale to tell—if only he’d gotten out of its way. Instead, he ladles on the melodrama, the clichés and the cheap symbolism until this ostensibly heart-rending tale of forbidden love hardens into something generic and prefabricated. Sincerely felt and well-crafted but stubbornly conventional, Firebird lacks the weight and toughness of South Africa’s similar Moffie or the tactile emotionalism of recent landmark works of LGBTQ+ cinema like Call Me By Your Name and Moonlight.
Actually, it would be more appropriate to namecheck Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain, an infinitely better film that nevertheless shares one compelling element with Firebird. They both feature two characters navigating a hyper-masculine environment that forces them to deny their sexuality. Unlike the lush Wyoming plains where the cowboys roam in Brokeback Mountain, Firebird takes place mostly in drab Eastern Bloc environs, starting with Haapsalu Air Force Base in Soviet-occupied Estonia in 1977. Sergey (Tom Prior, who also co-produced) is weeks away from completing his service time in the Soviet Air Force when he’s assigned to assist newly arrived fighter pilot Roman (Ukrainian actor Oleg Zagorodnii). Sergey takes an immediate interest in the dashing Roman while Luisa (Diana Pozharskaya), secretary to the base commander, secretly crushes on Sergey.
With this promising love triangle established, Firebird, co-written by Prior and Rebane, promptly pushes Luisa to the margins to focus on Sergey and Roman. Starting tentatively, their mutual love of theater leads to a trip to the ballet to see a rehearsal of Stravinsky’s The Firebird while their shared interest in photography results in some darkroom flirting and whispering of tin-eared dialogue (of which there is much) about photos representing “a moment that will never be there again.” As things heat up between the pair, Rebane covers all the requisite bases of queer, forbidden love cinema but with the careful precision of a filmmaker trying to stay respectful to his source material (Firebird is based on the real Sergey Fetisov’s memoir) while also courting a mainstream audience. Characters speak awkward Russian-accented English and their inner thoughts are too-often conveyed using hammy visuals and color-coded lighting and props that may broaden the film’s accessibility, but limit its effect.