The Antique

Original title: Antikvariati

Directed by: Rusudan Glurjidze

Country: Georgia / Russia

Length: 130 min.

Year: 2024

Premiere: Venice Film Festival 2024

Premiere: was supposed to premiere at Venice Film Festival 2024, in the Giornate degli Autori; revoked after a court report filed for plagiarism by three co-producing companies (seen through screeners). Eventually was screened on the final days of the festival.

Synopsis: St. Petersbourgh, 2006. On the backdrop of the governmental repression against Georgian people, a russian old man hosts a georgian young woman, setting an uneasy relationship between the two.

RATING: 4/5

REVIEW

A film that has been object of scandal, with some accusing a case of censorship, others denouncing an unethic attitude on behalf of the filmmaker and producer of the film, there is no way to have certainty over what is happening with this feature film, if not watching the film itself - which thankfully has been possible to whoever obtained a screener. The film's content is definitely a factor that helps forming an opinion, even if flawed by the lack of factual information.

Despite The Antique is a film with a clear political connotation, especially in the second half, this is not the sensation that emerges in the opening: we are introduced to a series of characters that travel from Georgia towards Saint Petersbourgh, culminating in Vadim, an old russian man living in a decrepit, historic appartment. Immediately, the film sets a slowed down tone, that frozen sensation that russian aesthetics can convey. 

The Antique is a film that operates in a delicate manner on a complex conversation that often gets polarising debates, but is here treated in a more conciliatory manner: the distinction between the russian government and the russian traditional culture - which is not to deresponsibilise the inaction of the people, but to capture the sense of inaction in a country that seems too used to live under the oppression of zars, dictators and absolute presidents. This surely can be interpreted as an implicitly more "conservative" approach to the topic, but that is left to the opinion of the reader.

A character dynamic that is enticing and entertaining between the two protagonists, not a friendship, but also not hostile. Codified by the different forms of education and cultural identities, it gets warm, cold, aggressive, lovable as it blossoms on screen. It can be even a metaphor of the relationship of modern Georgia with its past under the Soviet Union, uneasy, even nostalgic for some people, conflictual entirely for others. 

The Antique is a film that must be seen, if not else, because it touches a relevant topic from a side that is almost absent in contemporary cinema.