If a movie puts two strangers together in a new city, or en route to one, two words tend to come up in comparison. They are: “before” and “sunrise,” thanks to the first, Vienna-set meetup in Richard Linklater’s trilogy starring Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke. Or “brief” and “encounter,” if it’s exquisitely thwarted British ardor.
There are countless variations to be discovered among the bare bones of this kind of story. The bracing success of the new film “Compartment No. 6″ proves it. It’s tough-minded and tender-hearted in equal measure. It’s also slyly insightful on the theme of chance elements in solo travel, and unexpected, emotionally tricky connections along the way.
Director and co-screenwriter Juho Kuosmanen adapts, loosely, the 2011 Rosa Liksom novel, relocating the destination from Mongolia to northwestern-most Russia. Laura, a Finnish archeology student, is traveling to the icy port city of Murmansk, north of the Arctic Circle, to see some recently discovered petroglyphs. The trip wasn’t supposed to be for one: Her sometime Moscow lover Irina, whom we meet in early scenes at a cocktail party where the student feels conspicuously ill at ease, has contrived some airy reason not to go after all.
