Stations of a journey: Russia, Germany, Italy. The places that Sonia travels to in search for a better life can't be identified more accurately than this. And in the end, she might as well be somewhere else, for Sonia lives in a utopia, which becomes more and more agonising with every stop she makes on her journey. In The young mother departs from St. Petersburg, leaving behind a sheltered but dissatisfying life, in order to find a better future in the West. When she advances through Europe with a great deal of trouble, she initially finds work, but subsequently faces even greater disaster. A deceit is followed by an abduction: Sonja is forced into prostitution and dragged from one brothel to the next. All attempts to resist her tormentors or even flee from them at best end with punishment, at worst with being moved to another location.
But Transe is a film that not only makes demands of its main actress. In what is probably her bravest work, Teresa Villaverde masters a difficult balancing act between poetry and realism, thereby devoting herself entirely to the inner experience of her martyred heroine. Rarely has the journey into darkness been so rewarding.
