THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – NOT TO BE MISSED
A country with a fine cinematographic tradition (let us mention the directors Tenguiz Abouladze, Mikhail Kobakhidze, Otar Iosseliani), post-Soviet Georgia seems to encounter the same problems in terms of 7e art (not to mention the others) than the majority of nations from the ex-bloc. We have thus seen, for thirty years, scattered and talented attempts never to be perpetuated. So much so that the best films from Georgia discovered internationally in recent years have been made by Georgians either trained or settled abroad: in France, for Rusudan Chkonia (Keep Smiling, 2012), in Sweden, for Levan Akin (And then we’ll dance, 2019), in the United States, for Dea Kulumbegashvili (At the beginning2020), in Germany, for Alexandre Koberidze (Under the sky of Kutaisi, 2021).
This is still the case with Levan Koguashvili who, after the Moscow film institute VGIK, went to train in New York, then set up his camera in Brooklyn, among the Georgian community having found refuge in Brighton Beach since the civil war. which ravaged the country in the 1990s. The group thus joins other immigrants from the former Soviet republics, but also the Jewish-Russian community, which has continued to settle in this New York district, also nicknamed ” Little Odessa”, since the beginning of the XXe century. It is therefore very naturally under the aegis of the magnificent first feature film by James Gray, made in 1994 – already an ethnic thriller, already a poignant family tragedy – that film buffs will welcome this Brighton 4th.
Nostalgia for the old country
Of more modest invoice, taking more freedom with the main lines of the genre film, this feature film tells the journey of Kakhi, an old and colossal Georgian, who will find his son Soso at Coney Island, who is supposed to enroll in medical school to help his family back home. In truth, under the waves of news that he gives from time to time, it is quite the opposite that occurs. Soso, an inveterate gambler, has spent all the money sent to him by his parents, is crippled with debts and owes a lot of money to the local Russian mafia, not well known for its friendliness.
It is this situation that his old fighter father is gradually becoming aware of – a former wrestler played by Levan Tediashvili, 75, an illustrious Soviet athlete and two-time Olympic champion, who reigned over freestyle wrestling in the 1970s. The film manages, on this refined frame, to combine the melancholy of a chronicle of exile and the latent tension of film noir.
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