Pryputni

Pryputni is a tiny town in Ukraine, about 120 km northeast of Kiev. It comprises a few paved streets, rural roads and a few houses with plots of land, mostly populated by old people. The language is predominantly Russian, as in much of Ukraine east of the Dnipro River, and the locals are an isolated community; interaction with the outside is minimal.

As the movie begins Khristia, a schoolteacher is conducting a tour of historical sites by her students in Nyshin, a nearby town and having a heated discussion with his boyfriend, cabby Yura. He walks out in a huff and runs into Liuydka and her adolescent daughter Sveta, who have missed the bus to Pryputin, and negotiates with them the 30km ride. The objective is to visit Baba Zina (Grandma Zina, Liudka's mother). After heated discussions with Yura during the trip they reach Baba's house, a modest, somewhat rundown but unexpectedly cheerful home. There, Zina and Liudka engage in endless arguments about wrongs suffered and past failures while Sveta tries to keep her cool. We get acquainted in different degrees with other town characters such as hopeless alcoholic Slavic and his father Stanislavovich.

This film places us in front of human beings sculpted with deft touches. At the end, we know something about some (especially the three women) or we get tantalizing hints, for instance about Slavic's past. The characters' paths intersect at random as on real life. Some seem at first prickly, aggressive and masters of verbal combat, but we learn to appreciate their qualities (such as Yura's indestructible cheerfulness). This is not a small-town-big-hell movie, rather the opposite. There are are moments of whimsy and magic, such as Stanislavovich's first appearance or Slavic's visions of the past. The choice of the town's name may mean something since it carries the meaning of "companions" Acting is flawless and Ukrainian director Arkadiy Nepytaliuk tells the tale smoothly supported by the cinematography of Oleksandr Roshchyn, excellent both in dimly lit interiors as in the vast steppes of central Ukraine.

I didn't expect much but I found myself completely captivated by the film. There's no grand plot, it's a very down to earth story about ordinary people, but it's shot very poetically, the surrealistic scenes are mixed with the everyday rural life in a small Ukrainian town. The cinematography is beautiful and the soundtrack is mesmerising. It gives a sort of Kusturica vibe but in it's own fashion.

I was expecting a mediocre East European comedy at best. But this one delivered well beyond my expectations. In reality, it turned out to be a spectacular dramedy with a combined touch of irony reminding of Woody Allen's subtlety and the Cohen brothers' brusque parody at once. I enjoyed the postcolonial and feminist commentary the film does. The acting was great, I think the Grandma actress even won a prize for her supporting role, and I enjoyed the rugged soundtrack and the likewise rugged camerawork. Quite a feast both visually and story-wise! Highly recommended to anyone interested in Ukraine, the postcoloniality and gender dynamic of rural Eastern Europe. I guess if you want to understand Ukraine, this is one of the two to three films you need to start with.