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GRANNY
6/10
Babusja
: Russia 2003 : Lidia BOBROVA : 97 mins
In a house
by a lake, vital Tosja long-sufferingly manages her daughter’s household.
When her daughter becomes ill years later, her son-in-law Ivan forces
the old woman to give her house to her grandchildren, and he carts her
off to her sister Anna’s. Anna has to deal with her drunkard of a son
Vitya, though her daughter Liza is a successful journalist in Moscow.
The sisters recall their past, living in harmony with each other and their
neighbours. Then Anna breaks her hip and has to go to hospital…
(from official Tromsø 2004 Film Festival programme)
Seventy-something
Nina Shubina’s restrained, touching performance as stoic granny Tosja
is the main reason to see this socially-conscious tearjerker (a less effective
representative of that genre than Poland’s Edi).
Modern Russia, we’re shown, is headed for spiritual bankruptcy even as
it contemplates a 21st century of material wealth for the fortunate
few. Among those left behind in the dog-eat-dog rush for capitalist riches
are the ‘non-productive’ likes of Tosja – a lifelong toiler who even helped
dig trenches at Stalingrad, and whose descendants were injured and killed
on the more recent battlefields of Afghanistan and Chechnya.
For Tosja’s
generation, family bonds, rural folk traditions and strong community spirit
are taken for granted – but, as she discovers, things have changed. She’s
left metaphorically and literally out in the cold as, one by one, her
ingrate relatives (caricatures of selfish venality, for the most part)
turn her away. Bobrova certainly doesn’t stint on sentiment – the climax
features a mute girl who, exposed to Tosja’s kindness, miraculously (though
somewhat predictably) recovers the power of speech. But Bobrova’s central,
unspoken conceit – that Tosja represents nothing less than Mother Russia
herself (or rather Grand-mother Russia) – is strong enough to compensate
for the film’s manipulatively melodramatic aspects, stagey scenes and
the some cardboardy thesping from the supporting cast.
3rd
February, 2004
(seen 16th January : Kulturhuset Tromsø – Tromsø
International Film Festival)
click here
for a full list of reviewed films from the Tromsø International Film Festival
2004
by Neil
Young
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