MIFF Session 8: WHAT DO WE SEE WHEN WE LOOK AT THE SKY?

With a title like that and a running time of two and a half hours you will be forgiven for thinking that this will be an invitation to take some time out and smell the roses as well as watch them grow in real time. I was in and unironically. And this one does play fair by telling you what kind of pace it will be insisting on and the quality of the beauty that will fill the screen. But there's more and better. After some establishing shots we see a meet cute at shoe level. A man and woman walk by each other. He indavertently bumps her and her book falls to the ground. He retrieves and returns it with an apology. They then walk off in the opposite directions to their original paths. They correct the mistake but reproduce the bump and down goes the book again. This happens just enough to be charming but not enough to be grating. We see them at the end of the day, arranging to meet the next day and they part ways, in love.

Then, as Lisa is making her way home things around her intervene with her life. A seedling tree, a drainpipe and a security camera tells her that she has been cursed. She will wake the next morning physically different. The wind doesn't get the chance to tell her what the narrator does, so will the young man Giorgi. If they still keep their date they will not know each other. They don't. Giorgi wakes without his skill at soccer. Lisa has none of her medical knowledge. They have to start again at almost everything. Getting them back together is this film's job.

This kind of magical realism can elbow its way into cuteness rapidly and might here except that Aleksandre Koberidze begs our patience and let's us look at the consequences of the curse that has befallen his two leads. All of this is composed of relevant aspects of life in the small Georgian city of Kuteisi. Giorgi can't play soccer anymore but is happy to let the local kids have his old black and white ball. He finds a job as a kind of micro carny act where passers by are invited to see how long they can hang by their hands from a metal frame or if they can eat three dry biscuits in under a minute. This is one of the many schemes of drumming business by a local beer garden owner. Lisa ends up with him as well, mixing and preparing soft serve ice cream. And around them the life of the town goes on.

Why is this so captivating? The exotic location and culture? The director's painterly eye? Hard to say but I can attest that the more we see of the quietly magnetic leads the more time we want to spend with them. Or is might be the lo-cal cuteness of the dog who waits on the bridge for his friend so they can go and watch the World Cup together at the beer garden. A group of children led by a wise before her time teenaged girl weaves its way through the mini tales and observations. Now and then we get a big poignant moment of symbolism (particularly a soccer ball rolling on the rapids of the river that courses through the town) but for the most part the pace and observation are as gentle as the title of the film. And then in the last fifteen minutes every single thing we've seen falls into place as the slow and peaceful pace of the town and its people are put into context of the still warm memory of the brutal war with Russia. The joy of the normal and the easy is suddenly made rich and breathtaking. Everyone watching it for the past two years will have their own tale to tell and longing to describe for a return to the plain and predictable. That's why this film is so very beautiful.