Saw this back at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival
"Slow" is a story about Dancer Elena and sign language interpreter Dovydas meet and form a beautiful bond. As they dive into a new relationship, they must navigate how to build their own kind of intimacy. There are many romance stories that follow this similar structure and it tends to become very predictable with each move the story decides to go. Despite it's familiar, the film still works because director Marija Kavtaradze was able to take a different approach with the story and creates an interesting and realistic story about love with interesting characters. The camerawork, sound design and production is really good as the presentation reminds me a lot of The Worst Person in the World in a good way.
Many of the performances were really good as the two main lead have perfect chemistry between each other which helps to make the characters feel nature and interesting throughout. Character study films are really interesting as it provides an guide to understand how the human life works throughout many lens. "Slow" does have it's flaws as some of the pacing moments could be improved and the narrative does fall a bit uneven halfway as certain aspects didn't feel fully fleshed out or understand where it wants to go. Some of the supporting characters felt they could have been written a little better since they felt like they were just there and didn't offer too much impact to the film.
Overall, it's a simple yet effective romance story and I did enjoy it quite a lot.
Rating: B+
