who knew, the Russians have retrostalgia too

but this isn't Ostalgie, this is...  something like the former USSR's Absolute Beginners, maybe.

A longer bit from Stilyagi, which I only stumbled on while looking for some of that Soviet New Wave 80s pop that Ariel P is besotted with

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That Absolute Beginners though! What a shower of shit, eh?

It represented something to that whole London - style press - etc nexus.. there was a tremendous build up of anticipation stoked by the stylies... and then, phut... the movie seems to have been  "a collective narcissism reflected in the mirror of the past deal:, the idea being "we've always been good at this, okay the music comes from somewhere else, from America...  we don't 'do' substance as such but we really really know how to repackage it and style it up" (hence the prominent, godfatherly role of Bowie in the movie)

strangely it's based on a moment in British pop history (cusp of late Fifties into early Sixties) when the Brits hadn't yet managed to do anything but generate pale and tame copies of American rock'n'roll...   the Swinging London that the Eighties new pop / second brit invasion moment may or may not have been a replay of, that was yet to come