A Man and a Woman, Ukrainian style, in which new filmmaker Alan Badoyev takes a surefire cinema staple and pushes the envelope to create this haunting Faustian AIDS drama.

This exciting debut by young filmmaker Alan Badoyev is a spare melodrama almost primal in its intensity and urgency. It is an exploration into the meaning of human relationships, the perilous, seductive nature of sexual love; and the morning-after awakening that arrives when harsh reality sets in. A sickly man, whose lover has recently died of AIDS, places a classified ad in which he offers a huge downtown loft apartment, utilities, food and eventual ownership of the flat with just one proviso: the couple who moves in must love each other so much that they can remain in the flat all day, every day until the old man's death. If one of them leaves, the deal is off. Enter the pale and auburn-haired Katya, a cellist who meets photographer Roman, a handsomely muscular young man. They fall intensely in love and decide to take the man's offer. There, in the airy, near-vacant loft, decorated largely with unpacked boxes, boarded-up windows, a mattress and a high-tech hot tub right in the middle of it, they begin their dream life together. But the two soon realize that love has its limits…and its consequences. Alternately dream-like and death-like, this cinematic experiment about the chemistry of couples is reminiscent of Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" and films such as Jim McBride's Glen and Randa and Bruno Dumont's Twenty-nine Palms, with an enticingly tactile quality that leaves a lasting impression.