One of the best tests of a movie’s potential memorability is whether it makes us want to see it a second time. This is a test that "Gololyod" (Ice-Covered Ground), a movie by film critic Mikhail Brashinsky, unfortunately hasn’t passed. The movie is akin to a coat without any buttons: You put it on, and the wind blows through all the gaps.

The plot is not really important in Brashinsky’s directorial debut, which consists of two stories. The first is about an ambitious and perkily competitive lawyer (Viktoria Tolstoganova), who is suddenly so sick and tired of her victories in court that with a typically Russian youthful ardor and one shrewd move she makes both the circumstances and her client – who is in fact guilty – play against her. Nothing is gained by it, but, to her great surprise, things turn out to be more dangerous than she’d naively expected, and this time her life is at stake.

The second story centers on a handsome, gay interpreter (Ilya Shakunov) who gets stuck in a relationship with an oafish sexual partner because of the lady lawyer from the first story, whom he met in a hospital. Both he and the lawyer wear contact lenses, both are lonely and in despair. The film’s central notion is that any two people are linked through a chain of various acquaintances.

"Gololyod" has been described by its director as "a car accident, whose perpetrator has escaped from the scene of the crime." And what if shooting a slippery movie like this was that very crime?

The feel of the film is a mixed mood of gloom and perplexity with a hearty dose of lack of excitement thrown in. It’s a mishmash of a political thriller and a psychodrama, with too little of both adding up to anything substantial. Much of "Gololyod" is bare bones in terms of conflicted emotions – it’s shallow, cold and unbuttoned.