Too much of everything

One of my all time favorites.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

a film about alternative lives. and about the expected letters. three women. France. and the name of a man. result - a precise - delicate form of poetry. a film about small and significant small things. nothing unexpected. only nostalgic, soft and bitter. like the flavor of old perfumes. a film about East. tender and impressive and convincing. a kind of family photo album. or a fresco about a family looking its happiness in lines of letter, sounds of a language, in a trip and the emotions behind a meet. it is bizarre to write about "Since Otar left". because it seems be a so familiar story for the public from East than it becomes a confession of viewer. but not only the story, cultural references or the map of different realities are precious. but the beautiful performances. so, a film who must see .

A sweet and human film that is perhaps just a little too slow and distanced for it's own good.The strengths of this French film set in post-communist Russia include quiet but powerful observance of detail, and understated, very real performances and perceptive performances. But somehow, I was never as drawn in or moved as I expected to be, based on the amazing reviews this received. And maybe that was the problem. There's nothing like review over-hype to set you up for a let down with a small, quiet, intimate solid film. So I will give this another look.

Post-Soviet Georgia, impoverishment and depression, an old and unwell mother lives with her daughter and granddaughter while her dear son who is a doctor due to unemployment has gone to France as a working man. The mother lives in constant waiting for a next letter from him or a telephone call and to see Otar again before her death became a sole purpose of her life. One day her daughter learns that her brother has died in an accident, she is afraid for her mother so both younger women hide the grave news. They begin to falsify letters and show them to the old woman who begins to suspect that something is wrong. The psychological drama Since Otar Left is extremely sad and compassionate film.

Perhaps the best way to summarise this engrossing film is Goodbye, Lenin - Lite, or Goodbye, Lenin without the satire, but even that may be incorrect given that we in the West have arguably less knowledge about Georgia than we have about the East Germany so effectively satirised in Goodbye, Lenin, so may well be missing the odd satiric shaft. It says a lot for this film that even the odd niggles failed to prevent me enjoying it. Very few screenplays are totally flawless but usually it is only as you are leaving the cinema you stop and say to yourself, 'ah, but why did the waiter say ...' or 'where did the receipt come from ..' etc. In this film one was constantly asking such questions even while watching: How does an ordinary family living in Georgia - if you can call that living - acquire a total fluency in French and why, when all three members ARE Georgian, do they switch between the two for no apparent reason; how does a 90 year-old Georgian woman who has, so far as we know, never set foot outside Georgia, negotiate her way successfully (and totally alone) to the apartment building where her son lived and then find her way back, equally successfully, to the hotel in which she is staying with her daughter and granddaughter; to what, having sold all her possessions to make the trip to Paris, is she returning and how is the granddaughter able to stay in Paris without a visa (I write as someone with a Russian friend who has spent months attempting to obtain permission NOT to leave Russia but to ENTER France even for a vacation let alone remain there). These doubts to one side this is a magical movie taken at a leisurely pace and no worse for that and a true celebration of the human spirit. 8/10