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SINCE
OTAR LEFT
8/10
Depuis
qu’Otar est parti : France (Fr/Bel/Georgia) 2003
: Julie BERTUCELLI : 102 mins
When Otar
leaves for France to work, three women stay behind in contemporary Tblisi,
the capital of Georgia: his mother, sister and niece. They struggle to
make ends meet in a society that has collapsed after independence from
the Soviet Union. In this miserable situation our three heroines live:
the old one seeming only to live for letters and phone calls from her
son Otar in France; the middle-aged daughter strongly disliking the chaos
in the country; the granddaughter a student who really cannot make things
work with her boyfriend. Three women with longings, dreams and hopes,
living together – in turns quarreling and supporting each other, telling
large, white lies, hiding unpleasant sides of the truth from each other
– with the best intentions!
(from official Tromsø 2004 Film Festival programme)
 Being
stuck in a crumbling Tblisi mansion with three bickering generations of
Georgian women may not sound like a recipe for cinematic joy, but that’s
exactly what Bertucelli achieves with her terrifically entertaining and
accomplished first feature. This is due in no small part to the remarkable
central performance by nonagenarian Esther Gorintin the indomitable granny
Eka: a sweet-looking but flinty old stick who wistfully recalls the Soviet
days when Georgian boy Stalin was in charge, she lives for the occasional
phone-call or letter from her son Otar, who has gone to work in Paris
(his name presumably a nod to legendary Georgian-born, French-exiled director
Otar Ioseliani.)
When a tragedy
befalls Otar, Eka’s perpetually-unsatisfied daughter Marina (Nino Khomassaouridze)
decides the news is too much for the old lady to bear – and persuades
her own daughter, ambitious student Ada (Dinara Droukarova) to play along
with the benign deception… This is, in a way, a more intimate companion-piece
to Wolfgang Becker’s European arthouse smash Good
Bye Lenin! – rather than covering up the demise of an entire ideology
and country for the “benefit” of a frail female relative, Ada and Marina’s
ruse involves only the death of a single individual. But Bertucelli’s
film is a cut above Lenin in every regard: this is a brilliantly-observed
tragedy-tinged comedy full of the kinds of gestures, looks and dialogue
that will be familiar to anyone who has ever experienced friction with
relatives.
Bertucelli
– and her co-writers Bernard Renucci and Roger Bohbot - sketch in the
political and social background with a minimum of fuss: this is such educated
and (relatively) wealthy family that French has always been spoken in
the house as much as Georgian (a typically charming touch that pays off
in the final twist), and Marina feels the privations of the post-Soviet
world as fiercely as anyone. “It’s impossible to live in this country!”
she screams when the running water is suddenly cut off mid-hair-wash.
Such is Bertucelli’s control of tone that even when Eka blows her savings
on airline tickets and the action unexpectedly switches to Paris, the
film loses none of its momentum or appeal. Deadpan and unpredictable,
patient but never slow, one-off Since Otar Left is a delight from
start to finish.
3rd February,
2004
(seen 18th January : Verdensteatret Cinema, Tromsø – Tromsø
International Film Festival)
click here
for brief notes after a second viewing
click here
for a full list of reviewed films from the Tromsø International Film Festival
2004
by Neil
Young
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