Review by
Benjamin Poole
Directed by: Dea Kulumbegashvili
Starring: Ia Sukhitashvili, Kakha Kintsurashvili, Merab
Ninidze
April is the cruellest month and April is this month's cruellest film. Dea
Kulumbegashvili's sophomore feature details the travails of Nina (Ia
Sukhitashvili), a practising OB-GYN in Eastern Europe. In a film focussed
on the timely topic of women's autonomy over their own bodies, Nina puts
her job at risk helping women in rural Georgia by providing contraceptive
pills and even performing illegal abortions. Circumstances heighten when
Nina faces accusations of malpractice after the death of a new-born, which
invites scrutiny into her life; an existence which involves such
extracurricular activities as seeking violent sex with random hitchhikers
and farm hands. April is two hours and 14 minutes long.
The foreboding tone is set by an opening sequence of the ill-fated birth.
Preceding this, though, there is an enigmatic sequence of a creature, a
far-off monstrosity in a dark, dark space walking away from camera. The
character looks like if Morph had been subjected to a wasting disease,
although within the succeeding context of the film we are encouraged to
align this wretched figure with an overgrown foetus: most likely an embryo
once aborted by Nina, or perhaps Nina's own termination existing in some
mournful and obsidian limbo. Then, in what Roland Barthes would call an
adjectival code, we see rain falling onto a road in a blue wash: this is a
cold and cruel world, yeah? Wherein nature is relentless and miserable.
Both sequences are extended. Everything is extended in April. The bit with
the rain lasts for two and a half minutes. We then smash cut with
all the elegance of an impromptu bodily function to an overhead shot of a
woman giving birth. Juxtaposed with the bleak inclemency, the natal event
is framed as a compulsive and dangerous human action. Shot in a tight
angle, the effect is that the mother (who is actually irl giving birth) is
pinned like a butterfly as gowned OB-GYNs crouch over her; managing the
blood, the fluid, the silent child.
The baby doesn't make it. Nina is accused of arranging the death, another
example of her, as a self-appointed saviour, holding domain over people's
lives: had it lived, the child would have been brought up in abject
poverty. You get the sense that the male medical authorities, led by her
ex-lover, have been waiting for an excuse to hang Nina, and thus the noose
tightens...
I've had to stop writing this review at least twice to compose myself
(cuddle a cat and listen to some Sade). Not because April is an
effectively crafted film (although it is competent, and clearly the result
of an artistic vision) but because the narrative substance is so
upsetting. But it would be so if any film detailed such events with
similar unflinching and claustrophobic focus. April's extended sequences
are akin to the film holding up a big bag of soiled nappies to your face
and daring you to look away. The ensuing atrocity exhibition which
constitutes Kulumbegashvili's film is presented with little elegance or
insight, and, furthermore, its affections of style contradict the social
urgency of the material. For instance, the empty nightmare sequences
involving the aforesaid foetal-creature pertains a Marienbadism which
leans into the symbolic ambiguity of Lynch. It’s the laziest cliché to
compare anything slightly off-kilter to the work of the Speed Roadster
hitmaker, but the comparison is accurate as Sukhitashvili's bleak imagery
has all the vacant hallmarks of influence (also, I'm reminded, the wet
netherworld space is like in Under the Skin).
Another totem is Haneke, who is invoked when Nina goes in search of
joyless, obligatory sex in the same way that the heroine of The Piano
Teacher does. And, as with the work of Haneke, there is little suggested
other than a lopsided, sustained explication of life's potential misery
(again, belief that the fourth wall break in Funny Games is "clever"
displays a lack of understanding of how films work and is an indication of
mental deficiency/incipient sociopathy). It is an unfair comparison (because is anybody?), but Sukhitashvili is no Huppert, whose performance
raises all material: here our protagonist is left a wall eyed blank
throughout. Likewise, the social issues at play in April are simply
presented, rather than explored. And as the film continues, the sex is
broken up with more gynaecological sequences and non-causal scenes (a farm
at night: animals, humans, all the same do you see?). Every so often we
just see a lingering close up of Sukhitashvili's bare chest. Why? Is the
film positioning us to consider the female body as something other than
pornographic phenomena within the context of cinema? Is the flattening of
the badly lit body an attempt to uglify a source of nurture/sexual
comfort? Or is this solely narrative procrastination?
Like deciphering images from the pareidoliac gases of clouds, the
spectacle of April is so big and undeniable that some people will argue
that there is meaning to be deciphered here. That any film which depicts
such serious and demanding topics is in and of itself worthy of not only
attention but cowed awe. After all, the cruelty of April is unlike
anything else you'll see all year, but the implied recommendation of such
a statement will depend on the viewer. I'm knocking The Sweetest Taboo on
again.
April is in UK/ROI cinemas from
April 25th.
