THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – NOT TO BE MISSED
In 2010, the great Russian filmmaker Alexander Sokurov moved to Nalchik, capital of the Republic of Kabardino-Balkaria, in the North Caucasus, to lead a film workshop there at the city’s university, at the express invitation of its president. A curious project which aims to bring out of the ground ex nihilo, as was still practiced in the glorious Soviet Union, a generation of local filmmakers. It is clear – after the discovery, in 2017, of the magnificent and intense Tesnota. A cramped life, of the young Kantemir Balagov -, that the master knows how to do there. Because today it is the turn of Kira Kovalenko (32 years old) to prove with Unclenched Fistshis second feature film, the benefits of this teaching at the same time as a very singular talent from the outset, which was hailed at the last Cannes Film Festival with the prize in the Un certain regard section.
Certain affinities unite the two films. Tight family chronicle. Fundamental ambiguity of the clan, between the love it lavishes and the confinement it produces. Combative and painful emancipation of a young woman. The pre-eminence of a torn, splendid and mysterious female figure, the fierce Ada by Kovalenko taking over in this respect from the electric Ilana by Balagov. The film introduces us to her on the side of a road, shy and dapper, borrowed and available, hailed as she passes by a brave young man who woos her through the window of his van. Everything is there, in the doubt instilled by the film as to the fact that the young girl can respond to this invitation.
A suffocating love
We are in Mizur, a small mining town in the Caucasus without approval, where young people spend their time swinging explosive devices against the walls of buildings. In one of these apartments, we find Zaur (Alik Karaev), the father, and, hugging the walls, Ada (Milana Agouzarova), his daughter, as well as his younger brother Dakko (Khetag Bibilov), a young dog madman to whom his sister serves as a surrogate mother. Camera carried, false connections, cramped places exacerbate the feeling of oppression, the impossibility of avoidance, the terrible weight of a gaze that subjugates those on whom it lands, the threat of a sudden explosion.
These two men and this space are, in truth, Ada’s daily yoke. Zaur, in particular, whose conduct constantly borders on leaving the incestuous road. Being mute, padlocked, violent, this father is also seriously ill, which does not contribute to strengthening the power he exercises over his family, and particularly over his daughter who seems, with him, to play the role of a wife. forever absent from the film. One of the notable effects of this disease – which one wonders if it exists or if it has a symbolic connotation – consists precisely in a kind of paralysis of the limbs whose embrace, as long as one is between its arm or between his hands, turns into a vice.
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