When I’m standing in the hot sun for hours on end waiting to get into films at Cannes, my favorite way to pass the time is by flipping through the Market guide reading the terribly-translated synopses of terrible-sounding international B-movies. After a day and a half, I’m only about half way through this year’s guide, but I have an early contender for The Best Cannes Marche Guide Synopsis of 2009. Behold, Hipsters:

This is the story from the fifties of the last century where the group of young people has to fight for the right to be different from all others, listen to some other music, dress differently and, certainly, love. Popular smash hits, the most difficult choreographic items, a dashing plot with many twists, a penetrating love story and luxurious scenery will never leave the audience indifferent.

I literally turned this synopsis into cocktail fodder last night, snarking that the “penetrating love story” bit had to be code for softcore, because after all, penetration is a fairly sure-fire way to combat audience indifference, right? Ha! I announced that I would go to Hipsters‘ sole screening in the market this morning, to bear witness to its horrors with my own eyes, or at least challenge that bit about indifference.

Of course, I didn’t make it; I spent that 90 minutes waiting in line for Jacques Audiard’s A Prophet instead. But after researching it a bit (because what else am I going to do in between screenings — write about the Hong Sangsoo film? Please.), I wish I had gone the Hipsters route.

Hipsters, it turns out, is the Americanized retitle of Stilyagi, which was a subject of this story about mass-market movies by Russian high-profile filmmakers containing implicit anti-Putin themes. Stilyagi, which was released shortly after Putin himself took over the new Cinematography Committee to vet all future film projects, is apparently not “a film of open protest”, but it does allegedly equate its dandified, jitterbugging 50s teenagers with dissent against the contemporary regime by including a line paraphrased from an actual famous Putin quote.

Twitch posted a non-subtitled trailer back in September. I’ve embedded a clip from the film after the jump; I’m having trouble watching it on crappy French Wifi, but it allegedly features a song called Totalitarian Rock.