Dea Kulumbegashvili is the much-admired Georgian director whose characteristic debut, Starting, received golden opinions, although I confess to having been agnostic on the grounds of mannerisms that had been a little bit by-product – some resemblances there to Carlos Reygadas and Michael Haneke.
Her follow-up film, April, is now offered at Venice. That month has by no means appeared crueller. The excessive arthouse influences are nonetheless detectable, however Kulumbegashvili has mastered and absorbed them and has an evolving film-language of her personal, although nonetheless involving prolonged static takes, lengthy pictures during which individuals have inaudible however essential conversations within the far distance, and express moments of violence whose shock is tempered and complex by unusually exalted, if weird, visionary sequences.
Nina (Ia Sukhitashvili) is an obstetrics physician in serious trouble for having apparently mishandled a supply that resulted within the child’s demise. She is well-known for supplying under-the-counter contraceptive drugs and finishing up unofficial, unlawful abortions in outlying villages, and the grieving father – furiously and disapprovingly conscious of her status – is now demanding an inquiry into her alleged malpractice, suspecting that Nina had secretly made a high-handed determination that his poverty stricken household would higher off with out one other mouth to feed.
Nina’s colleague and ex-partner (Kakha Kintsurashvili) is tasked with finishing up the investigation by the senior guide, performed by veteran Georgian actor Merab Ninidze.
However this isn’t the least of it. Nina is deeply troubled by sexual dysfunction; she drives round into the outlying rural areas choosing up males with whom she has compulsively violent encounters, a little bit just like the piano trainer of Elfriede Jelinek’s novel and Haneke’s movie adaptation. Her personal repressed historical past of sexual and romantic ache and attainable being pregnant is clearly being gestured at.
Most startlingly of all, typical dramatic scenes shall be interspersed with unusual silent sequences during which open landscapes and gloomy interiors look like haunted by a contorted wraith or monster. Is that this a tormented ghost, an unquiet conscience? Certainly not an grownup foetus?
This isn’t the standard “abortion” difficulty film during which the reactionary anti-abortion authorities are straightforwardly criticised and the pregnant lady is awarded compassionate centre stage standing – as in Audrey Diwan’s Occurring. Nor does it exactly present the abortionist as oppressive or troubled, as in Cristian Mungiu’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and a couple of Days or Mike Leigh’s Vera Drake. It’s way more indifferent and affectless. Nevertheless justified Nina is in offering terminations to terrified and victimised younger ladies, her want to take action isn’t actually a principled mission, however clearly a symptomatic a part of some bigger buried trauma.
But the facility of April is that it reveals how very illusory the concept of modernity is. Nina is a part of an up-to-date hospital that prides itself on trendy medical methods all-but-guaranteeing protected, hygienic childbirth, and the failure on this regard is a really severe matter that shall be investigated utilizing comparably up-to-date rigorous strategies: open, clear, accountable. However in these huge open areas, the identical outdated male attitudes and prejudices maintain sway – successfully unchanged over centuries. Ladies’s our bodies are on the mercy of males and Nina’s resistance to that is additionally an agonised and self-tormenting form of submission. It’s a deeply unsettling meditation on sexuality and transgression.
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