LIFE in modern Russia may be corrupt and bleak, but there are still things (just about) to be thankful for, as this gritty ensemble piece reveals.

Set in a small mining town near Moscow, the film follows the events on the eve of, and during, a wedding for an attractive but enigmatic village girl, Tania, returning from the big city to her childhood sweetheart, Mishka.

From the start, the marriage is mired in problems. Mishka's parents are against it - his mother going as far as to call Tania a tart. The groom's father - who looks not unlike Rab C Nesbitt - is watching the guest list grow nervously. Poverty is rife, and he resents having to fork out for these freeloaders.

Adding to the tension, the miners get their first pay in six months on the eve of the wedding, and the mining company boss - an ex-lover of Tania's - is trying to bribe the bride into marrying him instead. Meanwhile, the best man - a wife-beating alcoholic with a silver tongue - threatens to topple the whole celebration.

With this much conspiring against them, you wonder if they will get through the day, let alone ride off into the sunset.

The vodka-saturated wedding feast - which takes up much of the screentime - interweaves storylines of ordinary people and the local powerlords - the piggish police chief and the industry boss gatecrashing with his heavies - that control their destiny.

The wedding party scene is reminiscent of the Deer Hunter, in the way that it creates a tension between the noisy, colourful and energetic celebrations and darker undercurrents of what may come. Like the Deer Hunter, it works because characterisation is so vivid and unflinching and the performances so good.

If you are looking for a rambunctious love story then this is probably too dark. But as a slice of life, The Wedding paints a potent picture of hardship, corruption and chaos in rural Russia in the modern age. Only the most resilient spirits can survive with their sanity intact in such a place.