Urok

Nadezhda is an elementary school teacher in a Bulgarian town. Somebody in the class has stolen money from another of her students. She tries to teach them a lesson and let the money be returned in secret. Her unemployed drunken husband wasted their mortgage payments. The bank raised their interest rate and threatens to take their home. Her father has a much younger woman after her mother's death. She is forced to borrow from a loan shark. The loan is coming due and she has no money to repay it. She is offered an unsavory solution. As she tries to out the thief in her class, she is coming to terms with her own immoral decision.

It's a nice moral dilemma. The filmmaking is a bit weak. There are scenes missing that could elevate the drama. The obvious missing piece is the child thief. This movie is screaming for two side-by-side storytelling. The kid stealing the money could be a great second plot. Missing that, the movie still has a great idea. The ending has some poignancy but it doesn't push the tension to its limits. There are missing scenes that could really raise the intensity.

The Bulgarian movie Urok (2014) was shown in the U.S. with the translated title The Lesson. The film was co-written and co-directed by Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov.

Margita Gosheva stars as Nadezhda, a middle-school teacher in a small Bulgarian city. The film opens with a small theft in the classroom, and the plot circles around that issue.

Nadezhda is beset by major problems--a spendthrift husband who has no source of income, a young daughter who loves her father more than she loves her mother, and her own father who is living with a woman younger than Nadezhda. (Her father hasn't bothered to remember his granddaughter's name.)

The success of the movie depends on the actor playing Nadezhda. She is Margita Gosheva, and she is superb. (I knew she was a good actor because I saw her in another Bulgarian film--Glory.)

After watching The Lesson, I know that Gosheva is a great actor. In my opinion she is the Bulgarian equivalent of the English actor Sally Hawkins--she can do no wrong. (Anyone who can successfully portray a high-ranking civil servant in one movie and a financially strapped middle-school teacher in another movie has to be great.)

As I think back on The Lesson, I can't remember a single happy moment. So, if you're looking for a feel-good movie, this isn't it. However, if you want a powerful, intense film, seek it out and watch it.

We saw Urok on DVD, where it worked well. It has a pretty good IMDb rating of 7.2. I thought that it was much better than that, and rated it 9.

From main characters to small cameos, the acting in The Lesson is excellent, with an understated but seriously dangerous loan shark, a layabout husband who is nevertheless wonderful with the family's small child, and even nuanced bank clerks. However, I can only rate it 4 because this feels like a 30 minute short story that has been slowly and excruciatingly dragged out way beyond its natural length. I wasn't aware before watching that it is based on a true story but weirdly, some of the real moments of action are not even shown and it is the build up and constant journeying around the area - by coach, car, and on foot) that appear endless. Having watched the trailer, don't be misled into thinking that the action is typical. The trailer is, of course genuine, but it feels as though another trailer would have completed the story.

THE LESSON is one of the mini-budget films (this one from Bulgaria) that packs a solid wallop in story without all the fancy trappings and star studded cast of the big budget films that focus on CGI, noise, and paranormal themes. Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov both wrote and directed this film, a work of cinematic expression that is gaining honors wherever it is shown –and for good reasons. And once again we are indebted to Film Movement for taking up the banner for this worthy film.

In a small Bulgarian town Nadezhda (Margita Gosheva), a young teacher, is looking for the culprit of an innocent child-theft between classmates in her class so she can teach him a lesson about right and wrong. But when she gets in debt to loan sharks, can she find the right way out herself? Nade is an honest, hard-working elementary school teacher struggling to keep her life together. With the home she shares with her husband and young daughter on the brink of repossession and no money to her name Nade resorts to measures her former self, untouched by the realities of economic desperation and moral compromise, would have found depraved, as she makes one last extreme effort to secure the money she needs.

The film moves slowly, allowing the viewer to absorb all the subtle statements about life in a post-communist state. It is a moment of examining the strength of women and schoolteachers that is wholly universal. The actress Margita Gosheva is astonishing fine in the manner in which she portrays this scrupulously honest woman who faces more obstacles that most. She makes Nade credible and lovable. This is a very strong film that deserves a wide audience.

Nade is a school teacher of teenagers; her husband is a man who dotes on their daughter but also on the drink bottle. His nefarious carryings on have plummeted them into serious debt. She also has a side line in translating Bulgarian documents into English. Then one day one of her students has her purse stolen. It is obviously one of the class who is the culprit but Nade is unable to get them to fess up.

Now she is presented with some stark choices as to how to pay off her debts and so begins a very harrowing and exhausting as well as emotionally draining journey that had me increasingly gripped.

I have seen some comments that this is a slow start and I have to agree. However, you need to set the ground rules in order for the later events to have the fullest impact and I must say this really delivers. It is in Bulgarian and a bit of English, and runs to 111 minutes; it has also won a slew of awards and I have to say they are all completely deserved – recommended to lovers of European cinema and those who like their films to be a bit deeper.