There's something pretty powerful about a story of gay sexual awakening put into the backdrop of a film that shows so many aspects of traditional Georgian culture. It was pretty courageous too, given the anti-LGBT conservatism that has a hold on the country. A young man (Levan Gelbakhiani) faces the challenges of poverty, a broken home, and chasing the difficult dream of becoming a dancer for the National Ensemble. He meets a rival dancer (Bachi Valishvili) and the two begin training together, leading to friendship and deeper feelings, which represent a challenge of their own.
I loved the glimpse into Georgian culture (dance, music, food, weddings, etc), and confess I would have liked even more of it. I also wish the dance sequences hadn't been as edited as they were - there is so much natural power and grace in these moves, and I think just holding the camera still at mid-distance for longer periods of time would have served them better. With that said, the real story here is about coming of age and gay in such a conservative country, and there the film shines. It exercises restraint by showing emerging love simply and honestly and not spending a lot of time mocking the homophobic men who menace at the outskirts. It does gets in a nice little dig in at the hypocrisy of the Orthodox Church by recounting the story of a priest responsible for "fixing" another dancer who had to leave the group because he was gay, and ended up having sex with him instead.
The cast is uniformly very good if not great, and couple of my favorite scenes were the moments with the sweet grandmas of both young men. Another is the touching moment between brothers, trying to reconcile the traditional path with nonconformity and still love one another. Lastly, the final dance sequence, showing grit and bravado but making it clear that he's personalized the dance, is stirring, and the film ends strong.
