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Director Fred Kelemen presents a cautionary tale of death, betrayal and fundamental misunderstanding
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The fact that writer-director Fred Kelemen's previous film Frost clocked in at a mighty 270 minutes is enough to strike fear in the hearts of critics and audiences alike. Equally worrying is the fact that Kelemen cites the infamously maudlin, impenetrable and slow-paced Hungarian auteur Béla Tarr as his major influence.
As the old saying goes, however, fortune favours the brave and anyone who goes to see this piece of Baltic cinema - shot digitally for the price of about one minute of a typical Hollywood release - will be richly rewarded by a film that is both accessible and emotionally engaging. Okay, it's pretty miserable too, but that's only to be expected.

Kelemen may have had a limited budget, but that hasn't stopped him demonstrating the kind of flair that has made him something of a legend on the festival circuit, even if he's yet to trouble the mainstream. The film opens with a wonderful long tracking shot, following a dour bureaucrat, Matiss (Dombrovskis), up some steps, to the top of a high, grim-looking bridge, past a girl sitting on the railing and on, down towards the other side - stopping suddenly when he hears a splash. It's a great moment, and no less powerful for being expected.

From then on, Matiss's life is thrown into a freefall as precipitous as the one in his obsessive imaginings of the girl tumbling from the bridge. At first he does the right thing by calling the police. For his trouble, he receives a fantastically depressing lecture on the Latvian suicide rate, courtesy of a downbeat cameo from Vigo Roga. (Sample quote: "Hundreds of people go by us every day and we take no notice of them. But if one of them dies, we start to be interested in them right away.")

Soon, Matiss becomes obsessed with the presumed suicide. He traces the woman to a bar (again, fantastically depressing), talks his way into taking home some half-written letters and the handbag she left there and begins to create a narrative for the last days of her life using the contents of the letters and a roll of film he finds in the bag.

Dombrovskis gives a striking central performance. Never lapsing into histrionics or betraying much emotion at all, he sucks down cigarettes, drinks vodka with steely determination and slowly but surely reveals a character in massive decline. Kelemen's bleak cinematography and funereal pacing create a suitably heavy, portentous atmosphere, while the sharp, well-directed script ensures that things never get dull.

The tension steadily mounts. By the time Matiss manages to track down the man he thinks drove the girl to suicide, the scene is set for some serious fireworks. The director and his actors don't disappoint here either, providing a superb drunken showdown with a vicious kick in the tail.


Notable for its artistry and panache as much as its bleak outlook, this is a film that won't do anything to alter the stereotype of Baltic dwellers as vodka guzzling miserabilists, but it proves that they also know how to crank out a good story

Sam Jordison, FilmFour, June 2006

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