To Love

After the problems with Goodbye, Boys!, Mikhail Kalik moved to Moldova, where the artistic climate after the fall of Khrushchev was not as suffocating as in Moscow. Kalik made To Love... for the Moldova Film Studios. Although they kept a close eye on the production of the film, it was approved by the Moldovan authorities. It was only when the film had to be approved by the authorities in Moscow that the problems started. The film was not approved and a 'corrected version' was screened in the cinemas.
To Love... is a mysterious treatise on love, consisting of fragments in counterpoint. The fragments differ stylistically: some are clearly fiction, others documentary in character, such as the interviews with people of widely diverse plumage, from youths in a disco to the priest-philosopher Alexander Men. Texts from the Song of Songs are also chanted. Kalik employs a film style which he calls 'musical-documentarist film poetry'. (International Film Festival Rotterdam)