BERLINALE BONUS : guest reviewer Bill Lawrence on EFM standout, Kazakh thriller STRAYED

With the success of Borat, Kazakhstan has been thrown into the international spotlight, but not in what you could call an especially flattering way. Strayed, then offers a topical taste of genuine Kazakh cinema in the 21st century. It opens on a two-lane blacktop that could easily be crossing the Arizona desert, traversed by a SUV driven by a track-suited, chain-smoking man (never given a name in the film) accompanied by his wife and young son. They turn off the road and onto a dirt track and head across the Kazakh steppes. They drive. And drive.
   Despairing at reaching the main road again, the man notices a bottle on the road. Getting out and checking he realises it's a bottle he threw out of the window many miles earlier. They're evidently going around in circles, but how – the road is straight. The car fails to restart and they're stuck in the desert – out of range of mobile-phone transmitters – and the light is fading. Waking the next morning in the car, our hero finds his son and wife are gone. He desperately starts searching for them. All he finds is a large old shack in the middle of nowhere and food freshly prepared. To say more would ruin the pleasure of watching Strayed.
   From this synopsis, it should be clear that the film deals with cliches and references to previous cinematic forebears. And indeed there's nothing really new in Strayed : apart from the fact that this is a very competent piece of genre filmmaking from a region of the world that's known, if at all, as the punchline to Sacha Baron Cohen's joke. That said, director Akan Satayev has created a laudable second feature that is well paced, has some fine tricks along the way and a very strong sense of atmosphere. The performances are convincing – Andrey Merzlikin has to carry most of the film and comes across as Kazakhstan's answer to Paddy Considine.
   While the viewer soon figures out what's happening, the ride consistently remains fun. The desert setting could have come from many a western, with tumbleweed gloriously blowing across the set – but the time is now and cigarettes, mobile phones, Game Boys and magazines create the sense of a very modern world. The American remake could be a great genre hit, but this "original" Strayed deserves to be seen much more widely.

Bill Lawrence
21st February, 2010

STRAYED : Zabludivshiisya : Kazakhstan 2009 : Akan SATAYEV : 90m
seen on 16th February at Cinemaxx cinema, Berlin at the Berlinale (European Film Market)

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