Original title: Shashvi shashvi maq’vali
Georgia / Switzerland • Drama • Year: 2023 • Running time: 110 mins
Language: Georgian
Synopsis:
Etero, 48, single in a Georgian village, encounters gossip. She unexpectedly falls for a man, caught between a relationship or independence. She navigates her emotions while grappling with societal norms, searching for happiness.
Naveriani is a natural filmmaker, and she’s gifted with a perfect lead performance for the material.
David Jenkins: Little White Lies
Director: Elene Naveriani
Wet Sand (2021) • Me Mzis Skivi Var Dedamicaze (2017)
Writers: Nikoloz Mdivani • Tamta Melashvili • Elene Naveriani
Main Cast:
| Eka Chavleishvili | Etero |
| Temiko Chichinadze | Murman |
| Lia Abuladze | Natela |
(for full cast list, additional technical information and reviews, please visit the Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry pages in IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes).
Film Notes:
Peter Brandshaw in The Guardian of May ’24 really enjoyed this film, rating it ‘4’stars. We hope you might give it ‘5’! “It starts with a bigger bang than most thrillers” he wrote, though a slow burn to start is often enjoyable if it leads to a final massive conflagration?
Etero is a middle-aged , single woman in a remote Georgian village who is out walking near a steep ravine, collecting blackberries for the cakes she likes to bake. She looks up, transfixed by the beauty of a blackbird – having been, we are perhaps invited to assume, only waiting for this moment to arrive? She loses her footing and disappears from the frame. Director Naveriani switches the viewpoint to something terrifying and vertiginous, straight down to a near death experience. Etero sees her own corpse in a parallel universe of her own stricken imagining. But this heart-stopping near miss, together with early menopausal symptoms, coincide with what could be a whole new lease of life.
While minding the family shop, Etero meets flirtatious delivery man Murman and is soon having a gloriously passionate, sensual and thrilling affair with him. Though Murman isn’t always around, Etero, in her solitude, becomes full of gorgeous wondering: what has nearly ended her life has resulted in the ending of her forty-eight years of virginity. What has been, in many ways, a difficult life, has been changed by a miracle.
The film is adapted from a 2020 novel by Georgian writer Tamta Melashvili. Naveriani, in her film version, tells us what most films contrive to ignore: love and sex is not just for the lovely, the sexy and the young.