Although its premise is almost identical to Aki Kaurismäki's black comic I Hired a Contract Killer and has echoes of Abbas Kiarostami's recent masterpiece Taste of Cherry, Vyacheslav Krishtofovich's film resonates with a haunting melancholy all its own. Unfolding with crystalline spareness, it's given depth and clarity by Lazarev's rueful, laconic performance and is brightened by a tiny, winsome Tatiana Krivitska as the hooker with a heart of US greenbacks who tweaks Anatoli's soul. Her intervention sets him on a path in which he realizes that not only is life worth living, it's worth being responsible for. In a culture where all else has been devalued, A Friend of the Deceased argues that a conscience can still have currency.