One of the predominant worries of our age is the desire to live authentically. There’s a profusion of technological developments and variables — now extending to artificial intelligence — that both help and hamstring us from achieving this, with much neurosis and self-consciousness brought on if we can’t. The 2010s and the ongoing Trump era have also intensified the clamor for identity politics, where a sometimes fragile sense of empowerment is gained by asserting difference in the face of mass American conformity.
So, the faux-inspirational outcome is that we must embrace our truth, and “Slay, Serve, and Survive,” to reference the in-film reality show contest in Nastasya Popov’s SXSW premiere “Idiotka.” Premiering in the non-competitive Narrative Spotlight section, Popov’s upbeat and genial comedy capably interrogates these ideas, with its tale of a young, aspiring LA fashion designer (from a Russian emigré background not unlike the director’s own) who goes on the now-time-honored reality TV journey of self-aggrandizement and canny opportunism, whilst pragmatically hoping the financial rewards could uplift her struggling family from poverty.
Debuting as a writer/director (with a story assist from the film’s producer Tess Cohen), Popov is meditating on relevant themes, but what she diagnoses about the superficiality of the self-serving media and fashion worlds is already received wisdom, rather than the lethal satire she’s aiming for.
Although they’re hyperbolized in a sitcom-like manner, what’s more ingratiating is the warmth in which she shows the lead’s character only partially assimilated family. Margarita (Anna Baryshnikov, who recently shone in “Love Lies Bleeding”) is introduced speaking direct-to-camera in the familiar TikTok-manner, with the spangly fashion materials strewn around her just begging to be combined into a Met Gala-worthy ensemble. As she peppily but bittersweetly narrates her family’s travails, whom she still resides with post-college, her spirited babushka Gita (Galina Jovovich) barges into the shot to berate her in Russian, her eyeshadow and lipstick radioactively colorful, all capturing the film’s seesawing dynamic in one mere comic gesture.
Their residence in a down-at-heel part of West Hollywood encompasses what could be called her mixed-extended family, with her paternal grandmother in Gita and her unemployed father Samuel (Mark Ivanir, late of several Steven Spielberg films) acting as an awkwardly de facto “Mom and Dad.” Her openly queer brother Nerses (Nerses Stamos) completes the brood — a pointed characterization in light of their motherland’s institutionalized homophobia.
Indeed, the future seemed brighter when they first emigrated to the U.S. in the waning days of communism, but Samuel’s disbarment as a doctor, and subsequent incarceration, due to Medicaid fraud — a crime to be sympathetic to! — has left them failing to meet rent payments and facing eviction (contemporary Russian corruption is lightly referenced through the unscrupulous gangster who gives a threatening visit).
So when Margarita is accepted onto the Project Runway-alike “Slay, Serve, Survive,” which admirably seeks to uplift underprivileged fashion design hopefuls with equal parts respect and condescension, it’s a potential a meal ticket fulfilling her professional dreams and hopes for family stability. The on- and off-screen personas to spar with are the show’s manipulative yet ultimately compassionate producer Nicol (“Riverdale” star Camila Mendes); its flamboyant host Oliver (Owen Thiele), whose catty talkbacks embody the youth slang of the show’s moniker; and most notably, notorious fashion mogul Emma Wexler (Julia Fox, in a warm riff on her typical image) as a judge. Among the co-contestants, the Korean-American Jung-Soo (Jake Choi) appears the most talented (and eligible as a love interest), despite the avowed hard knocks of his background seeming dubious.
Popov’s screenplay provides its most comedic and ironic — if not fully satirical — potency, when Margarita’s background is distorted by Nicol to induce the most pity, and where in the tasks for advancement to further rounds, stereotypes on Eastern European poverty and her father’s prison stint put a hunched-posture bag lady, and an orange prison jumpsuit, with tastefully arranged chains, on the catwalk to vogue. The director also achieves apt comic timing with the judges’ offbeat feedback, where the line between a design’s “woke” and “un-woke” credentials shifts chimerically; beneficially, these jokes are never to indict this way of thinking, only displaying how a slightly greater awareness of social justice risks empty signifiers and reductive representations.
Yet dampening the impact of “Idiotka” is how its emphasis on the family’s camaraderie and integrity is at cross-purposes with its satirical targets, both thematically and in a structural sense. It’s fully on Margarita’s side in wanting her obvious fashion talents to exist independently to her background (although the exact specificity of her vision isn’t laid out, beyond references to inspirations like Yohji Yamamoto and Muji).
With the falsity of reality TV anything but a fresh target, Popov also arguably shows her hand, as the sincerity of the family’s depiction evidences her true investment and motivation in telling the story of “Idiotka,” and despite the heightened performances that brush against stereotype, creates the most authenticity.
Grade: C+
“Idiotka” premiered at the SXSW 2025 Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.
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