I didn't know what to expect in Rusalka , the second film by Anna Melikian. I think she drew more from the mythological creature that has long been part of Slavic mythology than she did Hans Christian Anderson's classic fairy tale, which Chip Crane notes in his review in Kinokultura . Alisa embodied many ghost-like qualities, although she found herself having a hard time casting her charms on those around her. It is a fractured fairy tale of a girl born of an incident by the sea where her mother makes love to a sailor on the Crimean shoreline near the end of the Soviet era. Young Alisa has a hard time reconciling her lowly place in life, her thwarted dreams and the fantasy she holds of her father returning one day to lift her out of the seaside hovel she lives in with her mother and grandmother. When a sailor does come one day, her spirits are temporarily lifted, only to sadly find out he is looking for room and board. An eclipse literally leaves her speechless, after