I loved this movie from the minute I saw the scene where a bull drops out of a local delivery plane & plummets to earth killing two main characters. YUP the bull did the job and then swam to shore unharmed! But I am too far ahead of myself...
This movie has a wonderfully painterly quality that is brought about by the surrealistic cinematic effects that the director, Bakhtiar Khudojnazarov brings with his use of bright colours and washes of Technicolor. The female lead, Chulpan Khamatova, is perfect as the seventeen years old aspiring actress who loves Shakespeare and wants to become a film star. She lives in a small village in Uzbekistan with her mentally damaged brother and her loving father. The girl meets an entrepreneur ( plane pilot) and has sex with him after he makes her believe that he is a friend of Tom Cruise. The next thing she knows, she is pregnant, desperate and on a quest to restore the family honor by finding the cowardly jerk who seduced her. Father, and daughter (Mamlakat) supported by the decidedly "different" brother (wonderfully played by Moritz Bleibtrau--Manny in 'Run Lola Run') begin a wildly fantastic trip through the landscapes of Uzbekistan in which tradition and superstition clash with the chaos of a materialistic world. The wonderful script makes the film's sometimes slapstick and giddy narrative into something grander -- a meditation on maternity as a form of inspired madness.
One scene is great genius... The local delivery plane with a bull and a cow in the holding bay swoops sideways to get a closer look at Mamlakat's wedding taking place on a barge in the middle of the the lake, and just as the plane swoops, the bull falls out of the side door of the plane & plummets down to land SPLAT on the bride's new husband-to-be & her father- killing them both dead- and leaving her pregnant and a sinner. Chulpan Khamatova is perfect as Mamlakat, the perplexed mother to be, confronting miracles, wonders, joy, death and the unexpected as she searches for her child's father. Try & find this DVD or haunt the late night channels like I do.
This movie has a wonderfully painterly quality that is brought about by the surrealistic cinematic effects that the director, Bakhtiar Khudojnazarov brings with his use of bright colours and washes of Technicolor. The female lead, Chulpan Khamatova, is perfect as the seventeen years old aspiring actress who loves Shakespeare and wants to become a film star. She lives in a small village in Uzbekistan with her mentally damaged brother and her loving father. The girl meets an entrepreneur ( plane pilot) and has sex with him after he makes her believe that he is a friend of Tom Cruise. The next thing she knows, she is pregnant, desperate and on a quest to restore the family honor by finding the cowardly jerk who seduced her. Father, and daughter (Mamlakat) supported by the decidedly "different" brother (wonderfully played by Moritz Bleibtrau--Manny in 'Run Lola Run') begin a wildly fantastic trip through the landscapes of Uzbekistan in which tradition and superstition clash with the chaos of a materialistic world. The wonderful script makes the film's sometimes slapstick and giddy narrative into something grander -- a meditation on maternity as a form of inspired madness.
One scene is great genius... The local delivery plane with a bull and a cow in the holding bay swoops sideways to get a closer look at Mamlakat's wedding taking place on a barge in the middle of the the lake, and just as the plane swoops, the bull falls out of the side door of the plane & plummets down to land SPLAT on the bride's new husband-to-be & her father- killing them both dead- and leaving her pregnant and a sinner. Chulpan Khamatova is perfect as Mamlakat, the perplexed mother to be, confronting miracles, wonders, joy, death and the unexpected as she searches for her child's father. Try & find this DVD or haunt the late night channels like I do.