The Chicago International Film Festival is back again, from Thursday, October 12th to Thursday, October 26th, and I’ll provide capsule reviews of as many of the films as I can manage to see. All films are shown at the AMC River East Theaters, 322 E. Illinois St. here in the great city of Chicago, Illinois.
Nato Murvanidze in “Scary Mother.” credit: http://www.asiapacificscreenawards.com
A fiercely impressive debut feature film, Ana Urushadze’s Scary Mother (Sashishi Deda) (Georgia/Estonia, 2017) observes Manana (Nato Murvanidze, excellent here), a devoted, selfless wife and mother who has shown loving deference to her family for the years the kids have been growing up. But, no longer little kids, the family decides to now let Mom pursue her own real passion – writing. As the film opens, Dad and the kids have taken over the chores and upkeep of the small family apartment for quite some time now. Dad has even relinquished his place in the bedroom for her private efforts – ‘a room of one’s own’ indeed. But with the novel being completed, tonight’s the night she’ll read it out loud to those whose love and support have made it possible. And their jaws will drop, and not in a good way. Manana’s free-associative epic is her long-dormant id unleashed – all that she’s repressed or privately reconfigured comes gushing out. All of the body mileage, repetitive labor and drudgery that the average mother withstands over 15 years and 3 children is cathartically expressed in almost Lovecraftian physical and sexual metaphor. Manana has invited along her neighborhood acquaintance Nukri (Ramaz Ioseliani), who runs the local stationary shop, and he thinks it’s a worship-worthy masterpiece. But her husband Anri (Dimitri Tatishvili) is vehemently dismissive, and deeply disappointed that Manana would even indulge such thoughts. Start over, he admonishes, we’ll make all the same sacrifices for your next book. But this one will never see the light of day anywhere. (The kids just basically duck and cover – what else would Anri expect?) They even burn the manuscript the next morning, thinking it’s the only copy. But Nukri knows better.
Manana just thinks she has drawn from her own experiences and turned them into far-more-interesting fictional abstractions. She still loves her family dearly, but drifts away nonetheless in the face of their (i.e. Anri’s) non-support. She leaves the apartment and moves into a back room at Nukri’s store, and starts to prowl around the city after he’s closed up for the night. Is she indulging liberated eccentricity, or is she actually losing her grip on reality? A big clue is provided by the knowledge that her scholarly father is translating her novel into another language (presumably English) without knowing that Manana is, in fact, the author.( “I have never read such a filthy author – the text is ingenious and obscene at the same time.”)
Ana Urushadze is the daughter of Georgian/Estonian director Zaza Urushadze (Tangerines), but his fingerprints are nowhere to be found here. This is clearly Ana’s film, with her own out-of-the-park screenplay, a strong visual narrative artfully shot by Konstantin Esadze and an obviously strong rapport with her skilled actors. There are a lot of very good films here this year, but this is the first Do Not Miss item of the bunch. It’s quite wonderful.
‘Scary Mother (Sashishi Deda)’ will be shown on Sunday, October 15th at 8:00 pm, Monday the 16th at 5:45 pm and Friday the 20th at 3:15 pm (an $8.00 matinee).
Periscope In The Bathtub 