When Georgian filmmaker Dea Kulumbegashvili made her feature debut, the world was standing still. It was 2020, her film Beginning received a Cannes label at the cancelled pandemic edition of the festival and, when it finally premiered at the San Sebastián Film Festival, won four of the seven competitive prizes from the jury chaired by Luca Guadagnino. It’s an astonishing film that far too few saw due to the unfortunate timing. Being a huge fan, I’m happy to report that Kulumbegashvili’s much-anticipated sophomore feature proved Beginning was no fluke. If anything, her latest work – a provocative, eerily atmospheric character and societal study – cements her status as one of the boldest, most original voices in arthouse cinema today.
Premiering in competition, April tells the story of Nina (Ia Sukhitashvili), an OB-GYN from a remote Georgian village who has delivered “thousands of babies”. When one such baby dies shortly after birth, the hospital launches an investigation led by head doctor and an old flame of hers David (Kakha Kintsurashvili). To be clarified is not only the baby’s cause of death, but also the rumor that Nina secretly performs abortions for women in the village. It doesn’t take long for us to see that the rumors are true: Nina is providing birth control pills to those in need and terminating unwanted pregnancies privately. While Nina continues to do what she considers to be right, she finds herself torn by the forces of a repressive world.
That synopsis would make April – by some measure the most experimental film of this year’s Venice competition – sound much more accessible than it is. As with Beginning, you get the idea that you’re witnessing a woman going through a crisis of faith. But other than that, things get real weird, real fast. The narrative is sparse and fragmented. In between scenes of what’s happening with Nina, you get extended shots of plants, animals, the sky and rainstorms that are as intriguing as they are cryptic. Oh and a human-sized alien-like being makes several wordless appearances and bookends the whole film.
In short, people who need to understand their movies would have a hard time with this one. Kulumbegashvili didn’t give any easy answers. However, those who look to cinema not just for its power to entertain, but also to suggest and mystify will be amply rewarded. If you crave to be told a story by someone with a unique point of view, with instincts for the most impactful mise-en-scène, well Kulumbegashvili has those in spades. The way she frames and times her shots is often unexpected and evokes a strong, visceral response. The opening scene featuring the otherworldly creature, for example, is so strikingly strange, it grabs your attention and sends your mind reeling. She also shoots long stretches of conversations only from the perspective of one party, keeping you guessing what the other speaker/listener looks like and what they are seeing from their end. Through the design of these shots, she builds an unsettling, ever-present tension without explaining anything.
There is one long, uncut abortion scene that is shot up-close and completely from the side, so we see only the squirms of the headless pregnant girl while the clacking sounds of instruments hint at what’s going on just outside of frame. Again, a curious, counterintuitive choice that, coupled with the unusual length, lends an incredible intensity to the shot despite it being perfectly static. Same goes for the scene where Nina approaches a boy washing cars on the side of the road. Seen from a distance, the two briefly, inaudibly converse then go behind a shed and disappear from view. One can imagine what happens between them and interpret what that means however one prefers. In any event, you notice you’re confronted with imagery so simply constructed yet full of suggestion it’s hard to look away.
To me, April is a film not just about the plight of one woman, it deals more broadly with the plight of all women, particularly in relation to motherhood. Teenage girls who are expected to bear children and give up school. Women who get pregnant against their will and have no means to take back control. Good samaritans like Nina who risk their livelihood by helping others get out of that predicament. Through chillingly sober lens, Kulumbegashvili observes the everyday pressures and dangers faced by (Georgian) women. To illustrate the horror they experience, her film crosses over into the realm of fantasy and gives the collective trauma a shape. It’s a film that’s distinctly cold in tone but exposes (in many cases literally) bloody truths with shockingly brutal force.
Just like Beginning, there’s great mystery to April. You don’t understand it so much as intuit or inhabit it. Kulumbegashvili’s storytelling is based on a visual language all her own, for me the true mark of a great director. I’m glad to be treated to this near-masterpiece as the 81st Venice Film Festival winds down and hope it won’t go home empty-handed come Saturday night.