This modern folk tale allows us the pleasure of enjoying a love story while remaining aware of its construct as a fiction.
Lisa (Oliko Barbakadze) is a pharmacist. Giorgi (Giorgi Ambroladze) is a footballer. They seemed destined to be together. But fate takes a different course and, in a move that recalls David Lynch’s Lost Highway, minus the air of menace, they become Lisa (now Ani Karseladze) and Giorgi (now Giorgi Bochorishvili).
The two gravitate towards each other while stile pining for what they thought were their true loves, utterly unaware of each other’s new identity. If that sounds like a set-up for a Charlie Kaufman-esque dip into surrealism, it’s to Georgian writer-director-narrator Alexandre Koberidze’s credit that he keeps the narrative trickery within the realms of a very real world and the sense of wonder intact through to the film’s end.
The film encompasses the World Cup, the environment and modern relationships, with a style that is playful, even at times drawing on the influence of silent cinema. It’s a mischievous, witty and ultimately moving portrait of people in search of each other and the reward that awaits those who never give up.
