(2008, Ukr, 108 min) Dir Viktor Sadovska. Cast Viktor Nemets, Aleksey Vertkov, Boris Kamorzin.
A terrible storm has swept through the fictional Ukrainian city of Meiz and among the many catastrophe it unleashed was the releasing of many of the animals from the zoo including their celebrity Bengal tiger cub, Bip. Hearing of this an idea occurs to hard up young men Petro and Arseniy – if they can somehow trap young Bip they can sell him to Volo, local drug dealer and fan of all things tigerish. So Petro and Arseniy head off into the forests above the city on a tip-off, determined to find their prey. Bip is a comedy as best described by late film critic Harrison Bird: “there is a certain type of black comedy that I have seen from Eastern Europe and South America that is often mistaken by critics as drama, where the humour is derived from a starting point where everything is awful and getting, from there, progressively worse.” At least Bip has a happy ending of sorts. Once they have tracked down their prey, Petro and Arseniy have endured so much misfortune that they decide to shoot Bip and hope that Volo will make do with a stuffed version of the animal. They are at the border of the plains beyond the forest with the sun dipping behind the far horizon and the sky streaked with red. Petro raises his rifle and takes aim at the beast, only to be shot himself with the tranquilising dart of the zoo keeper, also on the animal’s trail. The film ends as quickly as that too – Petro is shot, collapses and the tiger cub melts into the long grass, disappearing back into the wild as the camera lifts off into the crimson sky and away.
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