This is something I always wanted to see but postponed time and time again until now I had to because local movie online platform that screens it, is closing due to cinemas being completely re-opened again. (It worked as alternative, during lockdowns) And it might all worked out perfectly in my favour because the last night I was actually just in the right frame of mind to watch it and enjoyed it immensely. I do remember it vaguely as a 2019 hit in the art cinemas, but than epidemic came and swept everything away, its truly like B.C (before Covid) and A.C. (after Covid).
Director Levan Akin is Swedish born and lives there but he has Georgian background, so for this movie he decided to create affectionate portrait of a (gasp!) gay love story in a deeply conservative and hard-core traditional Tbilisi. He actually had to lie about the movie story, to secure shooting locations. And afterwards there was a big deal about conservative protestors outside of the cinemas, troops guarding the peace and naturally a huge international celebration (it was the biggest hit on 2019 Cannes Film Festival). In discussing the movie I will try to explain what fascinated and impressed me without going on too much into details of the script itself - basically it is a forbidden and secret love story between two dancers in Georgian traditional dance school who also happened to be rivals for spot in the main ensemble. Merab (Levan Gelbakhiani) is sweet, young and fragile boy who carries the troubles of this whole family on his shoulders, while Irakli (Bachi Valishvili) comes out of nowhere as replacement dancer and he is basically charm personified. Now, I knew absolutely nothing about Georgia, I actually had to look on the map where is it - from my perspective it appears as a typical East European place (not unlike where I am from) with most of the people just surviving and living quite apocalyptic lives, youngsters smoking like chimneys and boasting about aunt bringing them fancy cigarettes from London. In all of this - divorced parents, bills unpaid, electricity cut off, nasty part-time job in a restaurant - Merab has his dreams about becoming a professional dancer and he has quite tunnel-vision until the arrival of the new dancer changes everything.
I must admit that I have never seen a movie (O.K. with the exception of "Nomadland" recently) where I felt as the actors were not acting at all and this is all real. Young dancer Levan Gelbakhiani is central here, not only because he is a main role but also because the whole movie depends on how believable he is - and he is astonishing. When first we see him, he is just a skinny boy sulking because someone else might eclipse his dancing success but along the way he falls in love and something magical happens - he becomes giddy with his first love, he blossoms, he somehow becomes beautiful. No one else in a movie (and basically everybody is doing great job) has such magnificent effect like Levian, compared to him everyone else is simple, one sided character but this boy simply explodes in defiance to authority, to criticism, to society. I mean, not for nothing he won tons of awards on the international film festivals. I also must mention that there is quite a lot of spectacular dancing and gorgeous music included, there is one scene where out of the blue some men sing A Capella and this is apparently traditional Georgian thing but my oh my was it breathtaking - kind of combination of ancient music I heard in places like Sardinia, Bulgaria and Byzantine chant. I am listening the soundtrack as I am writing this, its really special. It could be that last night I was in a specific mood when it really touched me, but it was just so perfect. One of the best movies I have seen.
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