Indigène d’Eurasie / Eastern Drift
Sharunas Bartas
France/Lithuania/Russian Federation
2010, 111 min
World Premiere
13 February 2010
Delphi Filmpalast, Berlin
Cast: Sharunas Bartas (Gena), Elisa Sednaoui (Gabrielle), Erwan Ribard (Philippe), Klavdia Korshunova (Sasha).
"Life is short, the greater part of it already over."
Gena has settled himself to leave the nomadic criminal class of his birth and breeding, to live a normal life. But he knows the odds.
They are engraved on his classic gangster face, like the love child of Udo Kier and Jean-Paul Belmondo. Director Sharunas Bartas plays the character of a ruthless killer who is not a bad man. In his eyes, everyone he meets seems heading for death.
A tried and true story, a girl and a gun. Two girls – lissom, radiant Gabrielle (Elisa Sednaoui) and brittle-tough, true Sasha (Klavdia Korshunova). Things go from bad to worse, and fast.
Terrific photography, images of a Europe globalized by cruelty. The film follows Gena westward from Lithuania to Spain, via Russia, Poland and Belarus. Sharunas Bartas:
“This story of a man on the move allows me to show the world of today, between unification and fragmentation; a world that ‘doesn’t sit still in its own skin’ and can turn into a battlefield in a matter of minutes; a world dominated by base animal instincts, no longer able to provide safe haven and shelter, where crucial problems remain unaddressed, like terrorism, hunger or the ability to share wealth.”
The actors inhabit their roles with total authenticity, not a false note in the performances.
Oddly, the story almost came a proper end twenty minutes or so before the credits. A wild jump in continuity – a viewer in front me gasped, “What the fuck?” – and we seemed to have entered another movie, one not nearly so good. At first I thought the reels had got mixed up, but that was unlikely, since Delphi has the best projection and technical staff I’ve seen anywhere. Perhaps it will get sorted out before distribution. Or we missed something in the balcony.
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