New York Film Festival 2024

[Chris Knipp]

IA SUKHITASHVILI IN GEORGIAN DIRECTOR DEA KULUMBEGASHVILI'S APRIL

DEA KULUMBEGASHVILI: APRIL (2024)

Struggles of a beleaguered OB-GYN

Georgian filmmaker Dea Kulumbegashvili's first film, Beginning, was a memorable part of the 2020 NYFF, and I concluded that despite all my questions throughout it was one of the most remarkable films of the festival and introduced the world to an exciting new filmmaker. Her style is just as harsh and provocative in this, her sophomore film. Beginning focused on a remote Georgian Jehovah's Witnesses congregation despised by the prevailing Eastern Orthodox majority and on the sufferings of the minister's wife. Dea's style and approach haven't changed here, but the focus has shifted to an OB-GYN doctor, Nina (Ia Sukhitashvili), who is an outsider in another way. Working in a harsh rural area, she secretly chooses to perform abortions, which are illegal. Her colleagues know this. Furthermore, When a baby is stillborn with her officiating (depicted in an uncompromising early scene), we learn from the angry father that there are rumors of her clandestine activity. If it becomes known to officials, not only her career but those of her closest associates may be finished.

Again as with Beginning Dea uses boxy academy ratio, again there are Carlos Reygadas-style nature visuals dialed up to the max. This time, watching the film in Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater with its remarkable sound system, winds and storms were overwhelming meteorological events: the disarmingly peaceful-sounding April is exhausting as well as disturbing to watch. There is nothing like the fire in Beginning. But just a drive down a country road is harrowing, due to the sound recording, which is emphasized by the complete absence of a score. There is no conventional he-said, she-said editing for conversations. The camera rests on one person for a long eriod, then shifts to another person for an equally long one. Again there are some long silences.

We witness one abortion, shown with a fixed camera a few feet away and as the patient, a deaf mute, softly whimpers, we see only her thigh and an assistent holding her and comforting her. The procedure goes perfectly well, but the later consequences are nonetheless tragic.

Nina is beseiged from several directions. There is pressure from her colleagues to stop performing abortions and the danger of what will happen if she doesn't. The stillborn birth is also leading to investigations. Though a thorough autopsy, read out by a senior colleague in numbing detail, shows the baby had no chance of surviving anyway, Nina is repeatedly accused of being guilty of negligence for avoiding a C-section simply because the mother wanted "a natural birth." So doubt is cast that also might cost Nina her job and her career.

Nina is the portrait of an obsessive. Perhaps such people are opaque; at least she is. One might think a person who devotes her life in more ways than one to a mission to deliver babies and help pregnant young women in trouble would be a warm, caring, sociable type. Nina doesn't seem this way. In a conversation with a man she went to school with, a onetime sweetheart, she declares that she cannot marry because there is no room for anyone else in her life. The actress Ia Sukhitashvili has a severe, almost elegant look, again somewhat against expectations. There is a sexual sequence in a car at night that is utterly cold and unpleasant and leads to violence. Her life outside the work seems empty and awful.

There are also elements of an art film or museum art piece and recurring surreal imagery of a strange naked figure, seen always at some distance, almost like a sepulchral walking corpse. This corpse figure pulls April away from the etreme, punishing naturalism it sometimes has. Again as with Dea's debut film I want to protest and say this is too much and too obviously one-sidedly violent, provocation for its own sake; and again one is convinced that this is too good and has too much conviction not to admire, if grudgingly. More grudgingly this time, though, partly because the protagonist is so unappealing. But aided by Bones and All's dp Arseni Khachaturan, a key source of the blend of long-take realism and nightmarish expressionism, and a powerful sound design, this is another clear demonstration that Dea Kulumbegashvili is a powerful new cinematic voice.

April, 134 mins., debuted at Venice Sept. 5, 2024, showing also at Toronto, Donostia-San Sebastian, Hamburg, and at the NYFF, where it was screened for this review. Metacritic rating: 89% (based on 7 reviews).