Dea Kulumbegashvili’s April takes an interesting core narrative and drags it out into a slow, ponderous and uncomfortable exercise in patience.
Director: Dea Kulumbegashvili
Genre: Drama
Run Time: 134′
Venice World Premiere: September 5, 2024
Release Date: TBA
As writer and director, Dea Kulumbegashvili wanted April to analyse existence and womanhood. While it certainly has moments wherein it conveys something quite powerful about the female experience, particularly around becoming a mother, for the most part it’s an exquisitely slow, ponderous and disconcerting viewing experience that seems to relish in dragging out every single moment.
Nina (Ia Sukhitashvili), an OB-GYN doctor, comes under scrutiny after the death of a newborn during delivery. Her superior (Merab Ninidze) starts an investigation at the behest of the child’s angry, grieving father, and the rumours of Nina performing illegal abortions and services for vulnerable women in rural areas come to the forefront.
Kulumbegashvili’s April is almost as much an art piece as it is a film. Every single scene lingers for minutes on end, often without anyone in the shot. The camera shifts from being incredibly static to acting as if it were Nina’s point of view, with interesting framing choices from Arseni Khachaturan and a seeming inability to cut away from any and every scene. To the point where, genuinely (and with perhaps only a little exaggeration), around 2 minutes of every frame could be cut and it would be the same film, just significantly shorter.
As such, it feels exceptionally slow. Such an interesting premise offered the potential for a timely, thoughtful piece on womanhood and the controversial subject of abortion. Instead, it’s a much more obscure and meandering portrait of a woman burdened with empathy and unhappiness. Which could work, if it weren’t for the fact that Nina is at a remove – sometimes literally, in that we don’t even see her face – for a large chunk of the film. Her feelings are up for interpretation, because very little is actually communicated directly to or by her.
While Sukhitashvili commits to the material that she’s been given and does a decent job of encouraging a connection with Nina, she’s let down by the rest of the film around her because it’s so bizarre, vague and, frankly, off-putting. April depicts quite graphic depictions of a natural birth and a caesarean section, as well as a slightly less graphic but still incredibly uncomfortable abortion sequence. These teeter on the brink of feeling exploitative, the latter in particular, because it doesn’t feel like the film justifies including them by weaving an affecting message into the material around them.
Overall, April just feels like an exhausting exercise to undertake. Its moments of poignancy and shock are diluted by the fact that it’s such a slog to get to them. The sound design – by Lars Ginzel, Tina Laschke and Zezva Pochkhidze – is incredibly effective. Bombastic when it needs to be, completely reliant on diegetic sound, and almost painfully, awkwardly silent outside of dialogue. But even that doesn’t always elevate what’s happening on screen.
Perhaps Kulumbegashvili was aiming for a film that’s contemplative and intriguing, but while there are moments in which April hints at that, for the most part it’s just unfortunately quite dull and unpleasant.
Dea Kulumbegashvili’s April had its World Premiere at the Venice Film Festival on September 5, 2024. Read our reviews of abortion dramas Angry Annie and Call Jane!
