Change Your Image
ipaunov
Reviews
Problemat s komarite i drugi istorii (2007)
It's cinema baby!
When I saw this film I was stunned. Like Andrey's other films-smart, funny, sad and surprising, this one had an additional bite! On one hand a fascinating portrait of a small Bulgarian town lost amids communist slogans and industrial propaganda, it felt like a metaphor for something bigger-the human condition in general, the hopes we sore with and the demons we fight, it could as well be your own “little town” drawn through beautifully casted characters. On the other hand what struck me was that Andrey had finally mastered his unique narrative style, to the point that it felt like a sub-genre of its own or that "Andrey style" if you wish, rather than simply documentary. This is indeed the reason why some people, less open to innovation, find this film long or boring. It's hard to think out of the box, I know, but man it's so much fun if you do! Using absurd juxtapositions, unexpected hooks, and spontaneous, impulsive transitions between scenes and episodes, the story line unfolds like jazz. It feels like a total improv, like it's out of tune, yet there is an underlying harmony and form. The editing may look like Brownian motion, yet it's governed by mathematical unity of style. Characters are constantly placed in and out of their natural habitat creating powerful, often grotesque parallels - hard to explain, you just gotta see it - like a dream within reality, a film within the film. At the end your brain, atrophied with predictable plots, gets so tired of wandering “how do I watch this?”, “what is this?”, that you just lean back, let go and watch- it's cinema baby!