Tulpan

Director: Sergei Dvortsevoy
Year Released: 2008
Rating: 1.5

A young sailor from Kazakhstan has a dream: to find a wife, to raise a herd of sheep and to live peacefully ... which sounds reasonable, but even reasonable dreams may get dashed for well-meaning people. One-dimensional film contains some intriguing imagery - mostly of funnels of dust and lightning storms - but tends to revel in the grotesque: giving mouth-to-mouth to lambs covered in afterbirth, squeezing blackheads out of Pop's back (oooh! a big one!), examining sores on legs, living in soot (that this picture is listed as a 'comedy' ... is comical). It also tries to let its scenery compensate for thematic depth; sometimes less is not more.