The basic plot of Julie Bertuccelli's Since Otar Left is quite ordinary and formulaic – three Georgian women, an elderly grandmother (Eka), a middle-aged mother (Marina), and a twentyish daughter (Ada) all live together in a large flat in Tbilisi. Missing is Otar, the matron’s only son, who has gone off to seek his fortune in Paris (the family is universally both Francophilic and Francophonic), and his absence is conspicuous at all times. Naturally, word comes of his death through a work accident, and the mother and daughter decide to spare the elderly grandmother this horrible news, and continue to keep up Otar’s correspondence with his mother. Complications set in when Eka decides to pawn off all of the family’s French language books in order to buy the three women tickets to visit Otar in France.
Obviously, nothing I’ve told you about Since Otar Left makes it in any way special. What does make it special are the performances of the actresses in the three leading roles, especially Esther Gorintin, who played Eka. Particularly impressive since Gorintin didn’t even begin her acting career until age 85.
However for me, the most impressive thing about Since Otar Left was the way it dealt with, albeit subtly, the generational differences between the three women, especially as it pertains to Georgia’s status as a former Soviet Republic, and most particularly, their attitudes towards Josef Stalin. Eka remains a devoted Stalinist (“This wouldn’t happen if Stalin were in charge”, she says during a power outage), Marina hated Stalin, and Ada can’t understand why the two women are still arguing about a guy who’s been dead for decades. There was one moment in the film, when Marina was talking to her long-suffering man friend Tenguiz, that I realized that theirs was the generation that lost the Cold War. This collective knowledge weighs on and liberates their generation equally, causing a sort of resigned, anarchic cynicism that informs all their words and actions.
While I cannot state that Since Otar Left is a great film, it was two hours well spent, and marks a fairly auspicious feature film debut for Julie Bertuccelli.
3/5
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