Tbilisi Dispatch. 1.

The former Soviet republic of Georgia is a land of wine, gorgeous landscapes, crumbling dusty urban architecture, Joseph Stalin and "George Bush Avenue," the now-renamed road that Bush took from the airport to the center of Tbilisi when he visited in 2204. Would anybody consider naming a road for Bush now? Certainly not in Iraq, but maybe in Washington, if it were a one-way street that led away from the White House.

I was a member of the jury at the Tbilisi International Film Festival, which has just wrapped in the eighth edition. The country is up for grabs right now, with elections coming soon, and the police going slightly easier at the moment on the demonstrators from the opposition whom they tear-gassed just a month ago.

Our prizes were given to the best film and best director. The top honor went to Andrzej Jakimovski of Poland for Tricks, a tender drama about a headstrong young boy's search for his father in a forgotten mining town where nothing much happens, unless it happens in your family.

In the warm days of July, when life in a place like this looks a lot more pleasant than it would in January, Stefek sneaks away whenever he can to the railroad station, where he often spies his father, or at least we're led to believe that the man is his father. Stefek lives in a dingy apartment with his shop clerk mother (whom the father has abandoned) and his wispy blonde freckle-faced sister, Elka, who at 17 seems to be getting her first taste of love from a local auto mechanic who drives a motorcycle. The girl's job is to take care of her younger brother, and that keeps her from using her rudimentary Italian to be hired at a local firm that seems to do business with Italy. The Italian executive drives the best car in this little town, not that this means much.

The main action, if you can call it that, is at the local train station, where Stefek can count on running into his father, who always seems to be on his way to a meeting somewhere, and missing his train the process. Stefek throws toy soldiers and coins on the tracks, waiting to see who'll take the bait, fishing for a father, who could be obliterated just as easily as he could be identified. Who said kids weren't confused?

The father is more confused than malevolent, as Tricks shifts between Stefek's mischief and the random happenings in the ensemble of locals. In the hands of Czechs, who seem to have highjacked the small-town approach to domestic comedy in Eastern Europe, it all too often becomes a winking and annoyingly playful magic realism. Add syrup and serve.

Not here. Jakimowski cast non-professionals Damian Ul and Ewelina Walendziak as Stefek and Elka, and they play the roles as naturally as the story requires, a tribute to Jakimowski's direction and to the realism that he's after. Adam Bajerski's fine cinematography is what we have come to expect of Polish films. (Too bad we don't see more of them outside Poland.)

There is an affection for characters here which reflects the autobiographical nature of the film. The director's parents split up, although they did remarry later, and he was cared for by his older sister. No character is exploited, no cheaps shots are fired at life in the provinces, and there's no sentimentality. There have been some poignant films about childhood from Poland in the last few years - The Cows and I Am (Jestem), two remarkably lyrical movies by Dorota Kedzierzawska, and Hi Teresa, by Robert Glinski, a harsh look at childhood lost to peers and the delinquency of the grim Warsaw suburbs. Tricks is a worthy addition to that number, and much more.

The film which won the prize for best director came from Russia: Simple Things (site), Aleksei Popogrebsky's sly dark comedy about a middle-aged anesthesiologist juggling a pregnant wife, a girlfriend, a runaway daughter who acts as if she'll become pregnant any day now, and a dying actor in his care who is looking at the end of his life and considering making the exit sooner rather than later. Of course, the simple things like love, death and making a living are never so simple. Think of the doctor as a member of the struggling middle-class, in a place like Moscow where businessmen bathe their harems in Cristal. In the larger picture, of course, he's one of the lucky ones.

Two years ago, Popogrebsky was on the festival circuit with Koktobel, a road movie co-directed with Boris Khlebnikov in which an unemployed father and young son hop railroad trains from Moscow to the seaside resort of Koktebel because they're broke. Now he's gone from rural to urban, with a collision of stories that are as vivid a reflection of a certain kind of everyday life as the gently told stories of Tricks. Holding them together as Dr Sergei Maslov is Sergei Puskepalis, a theater director whom Popogrebsky cast as the hapless anesthesiologist who keeps finding new ways to feel pain. He's the protagonist in this ensemble cast, yet his face is so expressive in reaction shots that he becomes a kind of solo chorus, the hapless man to whom everything happens as he watches it all. There's no stylistic breakthrough in the look of the film shot by Pavel Kostomarov (which premiered in competition in Karlovy Vary), just a consistently funny twist on the perennial comedy of errors. No surprise, there's no US distributor. Try to see it at a festival, or on your next visit to Russia.

Relations are not good these days between Georgia and Russia. That's an understatement. The Russians have banned the sale of Georgian wine, which is a major export from the small country, and also its identity. (The country's patron female saint, Nino - yes, it's Nino - is typically depicted holding a cross made from vine branches.) And all flights between the two countries have been cancelled, at Russia's instigation, making it an ordeal to get to Moscow. Those who are still brave enough to visit Russia need a visa, and the Goergian's have retaliated by requiring visas for Russians. Popogrebsky's comedy reminded the public in Tbilisi of Russia's human side, which tends to get lost as Putin flexes his muscles.

More on new Georgian films soon...

- David D'Arcy

Posted by dwhudson at December 10, 2007 2:58 PM