Review of Since Otar Left (2003) by Kirk J — 08 Jun 2007

Concerns three Georgian women of three generations living together in an apartment in Tbilisi. The grandmother's son, a doctor who has been working in construction in Paris, dies and her daughter and granddaughter decide to conceal this to save her the heartbreak.

Bertucelli, normally a documentarian, based the film on a true story she heard while working as an AD on Otar Iosseliani's Brigands, Chapter VII and felt it was too intimate to tell in documentary form.

Still, her relaxed, detached, yet perceptive and sensitive style definitely recalls her background. I was impressed by Bertucelli's ability to juggle so many highly significant themes -- mother-daughter relationships, family loyalty, historical revisionism, independence (personal or national), the simultaneous joy and burden of hope -- with such a light but confident hand.

And it never veered into the kitschy sentimentality the story seemed it might be prone to, except maybe at the very end when it sort of bought into the myth of the "promised land," which until that point it seemed to be keeping at a safe distance.

But the film is so warm and inviting and the characters so beautifully drawn and superbly acted that there's nothing I can do but love it.