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Asexuality is rare enough on screen that a film that does acknowledge its existence can build an entire storyline out of it. But the scant few depictions of it in popular media that do exist — mostly in progressive teen shows like Netflix’s “Sex Education” or “Heartbreak High” — generally present storylines about the orientation in an instructive manner for general audiences. Their supporting asexual characters are typically young, confused teens, and their journeys to understand and accept their orientation are highlighted by arcs that pit them with love interests who struggle with the unconventional shape their relationship takes.

“Slow,” the second feature from Lithuanian director Marija Kavtaradzė, offers a somewhat different type of asexual character. Dovydas (Kęstutis Cicėnas) certainly talks about his difficulties coming to terms with his asexuality as a child, but when the audience first meets him he’s decidedly not an awkward teenager. He’s a grown...

Writer-director Marija Kavtaradzė’s keenly perceptive and delicately sensual Slow centers on a dance instructor, Elena (Greta Grineviciute), who’s just begun teaching a class for a group of deaf children. It’s there that she first crosses paths with Dovydas (Kestutis Cicenas), a sign language interpreter assigned to translate for the kids at every session. Elena and Dovydas’s profession both involve non-traditional means of communication, with each of them using their bodies, rather than verbal language, as a means of connecting with others. But where Elena exudes an impassioned sense of freedom as she twists and whirls around with her fellow dancers, Dovydas is necessarily both more exacting and restrained in his signing.

Given Dovydas and Elena’s opposing means of interacting with others, it’s perhaps expected that their initial flirtations have a slightly awkward opposites-attract quality to them, which is made charming by Grineviciute and Cicenas.

"I'm never going to stop caring." An official US trailer has arrived for an indie romance film from Lithuania titled Slow, made by filmmaker Marija Kavtaradze. This initially premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival last year where it received some rave reviews, before going on to play at many other fests including Sydney, Karlovy Vary, Galway, Helsinki, Zurich, Nashville, Hamburg, London, and AFI Fest last fall. Slow is a unique film about love showing a story of two people, one of them asexual, who prefer to take it slow and let their intimacy build in its own way. Dancer Elena and sign language interpreter Dovydas meet and form a beautiful bond. As they dive into a new relationship, they must also learn to navigate how to build their own kind of intimacy. The film stars Greta Grinevičiūtė as Elena & Kęstutis Cicėnas as Dovydas, with Rimante Valiukaite. "Through dance, tense quietude,...