Dir/Wri: Saule Bliuvate | Lithuania · 2024 · DCP 4K · Color · 99′ · o.v. Lithuanian
Teenage girls in the changing rooms. A scuffle breaks out. Against a back drop of Soviet Brutalist buildings a girl plays basket ball with the men of the village. Marija is a tomboy. And new to the village. Staying with her grandma, a flower seller, she has to make friends. But how when they disdain you and steal your jeans?
Lithuania’s Saule Bliuvate draws on her own experience in this feature debut, an artful snapshot of a Lithuanian backwater where the mundane melts into the surreal. Marija makes a friend. Two girls at a loose end dream of escaping from the dour reality of their dingy domesticity to the glamour of a new world where anything is possible – if your face and body fits. They will do anything to get taller, slimmer, rangier, even if it involves taking tapeworm tablets to get ‘the look’.
Every three years a model agent visits the village looking for fresh young faces to work in the model industry. Talk of New York, Paris, and Tokyo where life is an endless party and everything is free. So much to discover. Tall and slim with an androgynous look Marija is a big hit in the casting call.
Bliuvate abandons a straightforward narrative to paint and impressionist picture that lingers in short cinematic scenes capturing this post soviet dystopia set amongst a disoriented youth where young girls are reduced to passive victims who offer themselves up to all kinds of abuse to find a life they think might be better. Meanwhile back home the older generation are discovering new things too.
Acid green landscapes zinging with Spring vegetation contrast with the grunge of dilapidated huts, mangled cars, a sordid environment. Young bodies entwine with each other as they explore and discover their sexuality. Naivity meets experience in this poignant and picaresque picture of emerging youth. @Meredith Taylor