Deborah Treisman

And he's entering this world that's absolutely sensual, even, you know, visceral and sensual and tactile.

And it's a radical change for him.

You know, it makes everything else seem pallid somehow.

I mean, it's so unusual, and that's why we're trying to find explanations for it, because you don't get this kind of honesty about the physical nature of aging very often.

You really don't.

You don't see it in artworks that often.

So when you are confronted with it, and especially when it's described with such glee, there's something sort of magical and grotesque about it.

And what do you think it does to Boris?

Yeah, I mean, it's sort of the culmination of this, you know, what I see as a kind of journey into reclaiming or finding his own sensuality, I suppose.

Because, you know, in the beginning we have Natasha, she's beautiful.

He doesn't actually like her all that much, it seems.

And then he meets Anastasia, and they have this sort of incredible sex he's never had before in his life, even though she's not as pretty as his wife.

And he's mystified that someone who's well-educated, who's a doctor, who's the head of her department, could also be the sensual being.

He's never before seen kind of the intellectual side go with the sensual side.

And so he's learning so much in the course of this stay.

And then we get to a different form of, you know, physical reality and sensuality, which is these ruined bodies that are still somehow, you know, carrying on, having fun.

I mean, that's telling to me, too, because obviously it's not pornography.

That's not the spirit in which it was drawn.

You know, it's like saying, I don't know, Botticelli is pornography or something.

But the Russian state has so little imagination.