To put this film together is like fitting the pieces into an enormous jigsaw puzzle only to find that a piece is missing. Whoever has done this will find how frustrating this film is to watch. On a wet afternoon in June I finally decided to tackle it, having it around unseen for a few years. It lasts just over an hour and the work was so hard I felt I had been trying to piece it together for many long hours. A Georgian town. A flagbearer is killed by a non-smiling young man. Or has he ? With difficult subtitles I was confused if he faced the death penalty or not as apparently the film is set in the future, and what sort of regime (some houses are reluctant to hang out the flags) has come into power ? Then there are two families. I won't go into that. In one of the families is another son, and it seems the two young men like to go mountain climbing together. Or is it only one of them doing that, and it is all an illusion/dream of the one who is perhaps the close friend/lover of the other ? A life depends on the truth, or a long imprisonment (subtitles playing up here). I think I only saw one smile in the whole film. A sombre film that probably means more than I managed to put together on the screen. As cinema pure and not so simple it is well filmed, and the acting is good and clearly the director has talent. But it is that last piece of the puzzle that annoys me, as if the maker of the puzzle deliberately left it out. Will I try again with this work as somewhere I believe it is my fault and not the maker of it that did not provide the last piece ? I might. It might be fine tomorrow and I will be smiling, and find that elusive piece hidden somewhere.
