The bleak and passionate new Russian film Taxi Blues is one of those movies that seems to exist in two ways at once: It tells a central story, while at the same time telling us another story with the elements around the edge of the frame. The first story involves an obsessive relationship between a hard-headed taxi driver and an irresponsible jazz musician. The other material provides an offhand, casual, and therefore doubly interesting view of daily life in today s Moscow.
The film begins as a taxi driver, completely at home in the mean streets and familiar with all the angles on the black market, picks up a carload of drunken musicians for a night on the town. One by one they disappear, until finally the last one, a saxophonist named Liocha, stiffs him for a steep 70-ruble fare. The driver, named Shlikov, does not take this passively. He haunts the jazzman s usual hangouts until he corners him, and then holds his precious saxophone hostage while forcing the man to work out the f