Slow
Slow
If I had to describe how Marisa Kavtaradze’s “Slow” is set up, most of you would probably guess what is more or less to come next. However, one of the many nice things about the film, which was Lithuania’s submission for the international feature film category in the Oscar this year, is that it tries to go beyond those expectations. The result is a rather moving film than what the genre expects its audience to be overbearing romance which registers as one of the more interesting romantic dramas to sweep around in some time.
As the story unfolds, we are given a glimpse into the work of a dance teacher. Contemporary dance instructor Elena (Greta Grineviciute) is about to begin a class for Deaf children when she meets Dovydas (Kestutis Cicenas) who is there to act as a sign language interpreter for her and the pupils. They even begin flirting at their very first encounter. For about the first 20 minutes, we see ourselves in the shoes of these two individuals who also do not have a language and use their bodies as a means of communication and Slow is clear that these two actually have a strong attraction to each other. (One of the cutest parts of the plot is when disappointed Elena has to convince herself that her husband is only going to be a translator at the wedding she has just mentioned).
They have such scenes in every movie and you expect that this is the place where they go to sleep. At this moment, Dovydas puts another shocker on us, that he is an asexual.
However, for a while, Elena believes that he just does not like her a great deal. This is indeed a major issue because the movie has made her out to be the warm, sensuous kind of person (at least partly understandable after a visit to her mother, an icy lady who makes Mary Tyler Moore in Ordinary People look friendly and unassertive) However, it is not only the true feeling that he holds such an idea, which is why he told her unlike many men who will lead a lady on or break up with her immediately without any reason. Because the bond they share is that powerful, they try to work it out by relocating from their respective emotional safe zones to a cross between her more orthodox sexual relationships and the simple ones that he is accustomed to.
If this premise were to have been put through the usual Hollywood studio process, this would have probably been sold as a more comical story of Elena attempting to seduce Dovydas to bed and would probably suggest that his asexuality was just because he had not found the right person. Instead, Kavtaradze engages in the discussion honestly, followed by these two persons as they wade through uncharted waters together.
From both extremes, the good times (which is hilarious when they are virtually zoom bond and the blasphemy of sex is an afterthought) and the bad times (one has to accept that’s not going to be the case ever).
Kavtaradze is able to avoid the usual plot devices and cliched cheap psychology that is such a norm in most films, so much so that “Slow”, other amazing films, do not help her character’s development. There, she is helped quite a bit by the work of her two stars who both played the characters smartly without exerting much of unnecessary energy. The level of emotional intimacy that they display in their scenes is dangerous in its magnitude.
Naturally, supers in it badges the watching an excessively slow-paced film about two good looking people who may not end up in bed in anytime soon. That is to a number of those people more than likely most further object to how Kavtaradze tells her story even at the end. Let me check that every time and say to those people if you are not in boom where it should be, you are missing bridgh. They will be amply rewarded for those who will dare to do something more in this case – for those like Elena and Dovydas.
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- Genre: Drama, Romance
- Country: united states
- Director: Marija Kavtaradze
- Cast: Greta Grineviciute, Kestutis Cicenas, Pijus Ganusauskas
