Perhaps, God sends up hardships so we learn to overcome despair.
April is a meticulous film, a precise character study whose universality in its depiction of violence endured by women, especially through the concept of child conception, expands far beyond the Georgian border.
Written by Kenza Bouhnass Parra
From its very first instants, when a creature enters the screen surrounded by darkness while children’s noises can be heard in the background, it is made obvious that April will be a distinctive experience, a film that you will not only experience but also muse over long after the credits have finished rolling.
Nina (Ia Sukhitashvili) is an OB-GYN, considered the best in the hospital where she works, until she faces an investigation after a newborn’s death and rumours about giving illegal abortions surface. Under intense scrutiny, she keeps providing for her patients at the hospital and women in the villages, even as the tides get narrower and the risks grow stronger.
Distinguished by its long takes and slow pacing, there is something reminiscent of Chantal Akerman’s cinema in Dea Kulumbegashvili’s second long feature April. An extended space where a woman gets to exist, without any urgency for an advancement of action or plot reveal, but simply through the gaze of a character study. Long takes are used to create an unsettling atmosphere, the audience quickly loses control of what they think a scene is all about, how long a certain gesture is going to take, and how much can be revealed in a stilled sequence. You are constantly on the edge of your seat, afraid to miss that one bat of an eyelash that will unleash a universe of interiority. Much is left to interpretation, narratively regarding Nina’s actions, but also symbolically, with the creature appearing at several moments in the film. Specific framing of women’s bodies leaves the violence their bodies experience to be imagined rather than witnessed, except for the stillbirth, which is shown without any compromise. In that way, the brutality those bodies experience is left anonymous, symbolic, and therefore transforms into a universal experience rather than a specific condition. Empathy is at the center of the film, for those women’s experiences, but it never takes over the despair and urgency portrayed through the uncomfortable but necessary resistance to a multifarious oppression.
Nina’s alienation to her own body is expanded through point of view shots from either her perspective or the men that she encounters. We are confronted either by her gaze, settling right above the camera, and actions directed toward the audience, or by her inner life as her internal resonance takes over any other ambient sound, and her breathing, almost unbearable in its intensity, becomes the leader of the audience’s respiration.
The stunning photography of Arseni Khachaturan, who also worked on Dea Kulumbegashvili’s first long feature Beginning, creates a singular look, not only of Caucasian mountains and villages which inhabit them, but of common places such as Nina’s car, her link between her official career and illegal activities, her sober home and the hospital where she works at, which all appear as more and more claustrophobic as the investigation advances. Between those spaces where solely existing comes as a burden, stunning fields of flowers are interjected, where the sky is bright, the horizon is infinite, and an eternal spring is at the fingertips. A sheer contrast between womanhood and its celebration of desires, and the violence that the concept itself is enough to bring onto a being, an incongruity that Nina tries to find balance in, and the film’s own investigation. An incongruity that can be found in that first sequence of the creature sinking into darkness while children’s noises surround it.
April is a meticulous film, a precise character study whose universality in its depiction of violence endured by women, especially through the concept of child conception, expands far beyond the Georgian border. A perfect instance of slow cinema and the subconscious impact it leaves on its audience.
Now playing in theatres.
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