Anarchija Zirmunuose

Acting is terrible, unnatural, full of prolonged moments. When people interact, it seems that every answer requires tremendous pondering, as if it was a question of type 'to be or not to be', i.e. expect 5 sec of pauses between sentences.

The plot is poor - 30 minutes into the film, and there is still no idea what the film will be about. There is no intrigue at all - everything evolves rather slowly, and without any unexpected events.

The film mixed different decades - the main actor is dressed as if she was from 70s in the beginning of movie. When watching TV, the actual images shown made an impression that the time in the film is still soviet times - i.e. news presenters are not uber professional, still read from the cheat-paper.

Some of the moments were repeated more than 5 times, such as tying a shoe lace (which was usually followed by a slow head-up motion), or asking "are we going to see each other later"? The questions didn't make any sense, as they were studying in the same university, so doh, sure will meet again.

I watched this film because I study Lithuanian, and I really liked it. Maybe the reason is, I spend a lot of my time in Vilnius, and this movie has caught its true spirit. Not the spirit of tourist attractions in the historical center, but the spirit of suburbs and "sleeping districts", where people are mostly not originally from the city. Other reviewers are complaining about dialogues, but that's exactly how I felt about talking to Lithuanians before Vilnius became such a huge tourism destination, and before I learned when to speak Russian and when to speak English, and when it's better to pretend that you know Lithuanian (which has several dialects that are also a subject of mockery sometimes). This film is exactly about this - communication failures between strangers who try to belong in a world which is weird by itself. Also, other reviewers tend to not understand social differences between characters (hence, old-fashioned clothes as a marker of a poor family). Maybe the film is not brilliant altogether, but many of its so-called weak points are actually moments of truth.