Director: Dover Kosashvili
Year Released: 2001
Rating: 1.0
Here's a little story for you: an acquaintance of mine, from Greece, had graduated from the University of Athens with high academic honors several years ago. Her parents wanted her to marry 'this guy' that she absolutely couldn't stand, while she begged them to allow her to marry this other man, who she met at college and really loved. Instead of telling the man she loved that since her parents didn't approve of her marrying him they were going to break up, she left the country with him, came to live in my area (of all places), and both of them are now working as elementary school teachers, and happily married on top of that. What this movie is saying is, in the above scenario, the parents were right and their daughter was being foolish and disrespectful - the child is a tool of the parents' whims and that he/she is to leave such an important life-decision up to them. The brooding 31-year-old student in this film does exactly that: he refuses to make an active decision, submits to the will of others, spits in the face of the woman (and her daughter) he cares for (what is with the 20-minute sex scene, anyway? is that Kosashvili's idea of character development?) and accepts what the film suggests is the appropriate - if not universally accepted - decision (the idea of this is deeply troubling to societies that value 'true love'). This film - clearly a calculated provocation - is an example what Sartre called 'bad faith.'
