Grace

Original title: Blazh

Directed by: Ilya Povolotsky

Country: Russia

Length: 119 min.

Year: 2023

Premiere: Cannes 2023

Availability: Klassiki

Synopsis: a father and daughter travel through desolate landscapes, searching for some form of redemption.

RATING: 5/5 (VERY RECOMMENDED)

 

REVIEW

To describe Grace as a road movie or a coming-of-age would be reductive. It is both of these genres: a father and daughter live a nomadic life in a van, and the daughter is in a phase of personal maturation. Grace is however a larger than life, full artpiece that goes beyond a mere categorisation, a masterful debut fiction feature film. It is otherworldy, paralysed in time, peaceful and tormenting at the same time, all together a truly unique work in the current cinematic landscape.

Through a vast journey that sees the protagonists start in the Kabardino-Balcarian region (associated to several new filmmakers of the russian scene: Kantemir Balagov, Kira Kovalenko, Vladimir Bitokov), travel through the desertic caucasus and Georgia all the way to the north - as the saying goes, going to the north is a journey towards hope. Therein lies the title's meaning: the protagonists long for a grace to find in their life, an apparent quest for the unreachable. Yet, this grace might simply be in the soul, already withing them, or at least within the daughter's character.

Photographed on film, the grainy texture adds to the beautifully shot russian landscape of the film, with some uses of framing that resemble Sokurov's cinema or Tarkovsky's long takes - but in no way Grace feels referential or a copycat of previous russian cinema, rather as a spiritual continuation. There is a small metacinematic subtone due to the fact that the protagonists hold a travelling cinema, reminiscent of the now ancient tradition that dates back to the last century's reception of cinema in rural areas around the globe.

Grace is otherworldy, paralysed in time, peaceful and tormenting at the same time, all together a truly unique work in the current cinematic landscape.