Ever get claustrophobic even though you have an entire city in which to roam?  That's just how Tanya and Artyom feel when they try to move from Moscow to London in Last Resort, the first film from Shooting Gallery's 2001 Film Series.  The film, which could possibly redefine the word "bleak," has won awards at a number of festivals and garnered director Pawel Pavlikovsky the Most Promising Newcomer Award at the British version of the Oscars.

Upon arrival in the UK, young mother Tanya (Dina Korzun) and her ten-year-old son Artyom (Artyom Strelnikov) are given the third degree by a customs officer.  Tanya, who doesn't have a firm grasp of the English language, explains she and her son are heading to London to meet her fiancé.  Because she has little money and no work permit, Tanya tells the customs officer she's a refugee in the hopes they'll leave the pretty children's book illustrator alone long enough to contact her beau.

They don't, though.  Tanya and Artyom are taken to coastal Stonehaven, which is, essentially, a holding area for immigrants that England doesn't want wandering around London.  They get a free flat (in a building called Dreamland," of all things) and vouchers for food, but as political asylum applicants, they must stay in Stonehaven for at least a year.  Withdrawing the application can take up to six months.  So Tanya is stuck with no work permit (and no jobs even if she had one) and a fiancé who won't return her calls (shades of Felicia's Journey) while she tries to get by in a drab town full of security cameras and fish dinners that contain no fish at all.

While the street-smart Artyom (think a Growing Pains-era Leonardo DiCaprio) begins to associate with a seedy crowd, two men offer to give Tanya (think a Russian Emily Watson) a hand - one is a successful businessman and the other is an ex-con.  The entrepreneur is an Internet porn guru (Lindsey Honey – he's the Al Goldstein of the U.K.) who wants Tanya to drop her knickers for a live video stream that could net her big bucks.  The ex-con (Paddy Considine, Born Romantic), a kindly arcade manager and part-time bingo caller (making Resort the second Brit film of the year to feature a bingo caller – the other is House!), is a sweetie who falls for Tanya, befriends her boy and helps them out with furnishing and decorating their tiny apartment.

Resort, which has an ending that's just about as un-Hollywood as they come, is reminiscent of Jim Jarmusch's Down By Law, which featured characters spending the entire film trying to escape from a dreary place only to end up in a place just as dreary.  Pavlikovsky, who has made a career of filming documentaries for the BBC (they financed Resort, too), does a great job wielding his handheld camera to make this film feel like a documentary, as well.  He and cinematographer Ryszard Lenczewski also add a few startlingly well-composed shots that are beautiful, yet add to Resort's overall dreariness.

1:17 –

but contains adult language, brief nudity and strong sexual content