Farewell, Home Sweet Home (1999)

Yazar: ferrisbuellersdayoffblog on 24 Ağustos 2009 – 16:11 -

As facetious and civic as everlastingly, Georgian helmer Otar Iosseliani adds another installment to his Parisian works with “Farewell, Terra Firma!” With typical offhanded nonchalance, he tracks a handful of characters from the loftier and take down French crusts as their paths crisscross in villas and at the beck bridges. After winning three Jury Prizes at Venice (the last looking for his 1996 “Brigands, Chapter VII”), the director plainly has overused of being always a bridesmaid, never a bride, and flow pic was screened into public notice of competition in Cannes. Auds for such Iosseliani films as “Favorites of the Moon” should find this an congenial stroll by way of presumptuous turf, where the irony is thick and the humor sardonic but gentle.

Quiet teenager Nicolas (Nico Tarielashvili) is the oldest son of a wealthy bourgeois family, whose head is his businesswoman mother (Lily Lavina), generally seen flying to meetings in her helicopter. Father (played by Iosseliani) is a friend of the bottle, kept confined to his room in the family mansion during mother’s dinner parties. The son performs chemistry experiments. Papa prefers his train set.

Nicolas has a secret life in the big city, where he consorts with a beggar pal (Joachim Salinger) and washes windows and dishes in a cafe. His love for the owner’s pretty daughter (Stephanie Hainque) is, alas, unrequited. She prefers a handsome young sailor on a rented Harley Davidson who treats her like dirt. When Nicolas sneaks his lowlife friends into the family wine cellar one night, a great friendship arises between Dad and a drunken hobo (Amiran Amiranachvili) who share the same taste in wine and madrigals. The son’s adventures in slumming soon land him in jail, after which he sheds his jeans for clothes more befitting his rank, not to mention a new convertible. It is Papa who chooses freedom in a light, exhilarating ending.

Recalling the happy-go-lucky hero of Iosseliani’s 1972 “There Was a Singing Blackbird,” Nicolas ends up with the clipped wings of a youth who has stopped dreaming of greener pastures. The moral victor — in Iosseliani’s deadpan performance — is his do-nothing father, embodying the director’s cool detachment from the vanities of life and embracing his love of good wine and fine music (illustrated in Nicolas Zourabichvili’s score).

The story unspools gracefully in cinematographer William Lubtchansky’s long, fluid camera movements, which effortlessly take the action from one character or focus to another. Script brims with casual humorous details — the pelican accompanying a cabaret singer, the three little daughters in their riding outfits, the mother’s busy partner/lover and his lamentably clumsy male secretary, an African couple in coordinated robes, and so on. The enjoyable non-pro actors, who are nearly wordless, are directed with a light, affectionate touch.


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