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Film Review: Paradjanov

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  • Film Review: Paradjanov

    PARADJANOV: FILM REVIEW

    Hollywood Reporter
    July 31 2013

    9:53 AM PDT 7/31/2013 by Boyd van Hoeij

    The Bottom Line
    An unconventional biopic for an unconventional artist.

    Directors Serge Avedikian and Olena Fetisova's suitably idiosyncratic
    biopic centers on the eccentric Armenian-born Soviet director Sergei
    Paradjanov.

    ODESSA -- The eccentric life and vision of Soviet-era director Sergei
    Paradjanov -- a unique artist championed by the likes of Fellini,
    Godard, Antonioni and Tarkovsky -- are artfully suggested more
    than fully documented in the suitably offbeat biopic Paradjanov,
    from Ukrainian writer-director Olena Fetisova and French-Armenian
    actor-director Serge Avedikian, who also plays the lead.

    The film premiered at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival and also played
    at Odessa, where the director's own films were also shown, a move
    that'll likely be replicated at other festivals in 2014, when the 90th
    anniversary of the Armenian-born director's birth will be celebrated.

    Paradjanov is far from a complete compendium of all the major events
    in the director's life. Indeed, in what almost amounts to a case of
    willful poetic irony, the filmmaker's two marriages and his son are
    barely suggested, though his run-ins with the Communist authorities
    because of his "suspected" homosexuality are documented in quite
    some detail (he would eventually be sentenced to five years in
    prison). The director's second wife, Svetlana Tscherbatiuk (Russian
    star Yulia Peresild), whom he divorced in 1962 , is in fact one of
    the most problematic characters, occasionally floating into scenes
    but never part of a clear conflict or even the recipient of some kind
    of special affection from Paradjanov, who seemed to get along with
    everyone willing to acknowledge his genius.

    Though the film omits or skims over large swaths of biographical
    detail, Paradjanov, written by co-director and producer Fetisova, is
    neither a fully artistic expression of Paradjanov's vision and poetry
    that completely ignores narrative conventions in the way the master's
    most famous film, 1968's The Color of Pomegranates, did when he made
    what turned out to be a work that was only nominally a biographical
    film about Sayat-Nova, Armenia's most famous poet-troubadour.

    Instead, this Ukrainian-French-Armenian-Georgian co-production
    remains suspended between these two extremes, creating a narrative
    throughline by staging some of the key moments in the filmmaker's life
    while occasionally making room for more absurd and surreal scenes that
    suggest something of the poetic and visual powers that the visionary
    filmmaker was capable of. He's also seen directing scenes of several
    of his films, including his work with actress Sofiko Chiaureli,
    who played six roles in Pomegranates including the young male lead,
    his muse and love interest.

    It's a gamble that mostly works, suggesting at once something of the
    unique personality and of the life of the filmmaker, who arguably made
    the defining film in the cinema history of not one but three countries:
    Pomegranates in Armenia, Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors in Ukraine
    and The Legend of Suram Fortress in Georgia (though all of these were
    part of the Soviet Union during the director's life).

    That said, it is unlikely that audiences completely unfamiliar with
    Paradjanov's life and work and the authoritarian Soviet regime will
    be able to fully follow everything that happens -- though the film
    is accessible enough for any curious arthouse enthusiast with a basic
    knowledge of the region.

    Co-director Avedikian is not only a good physical match for Paradjanov
    but crucially, he also manages to suggest the charisma, imagination
    and talent that made the man such an admired artist, making some of his
    capricious diva antics almost feel well-deserved rather than annoying.

    Cinematography and especially production design and costumes are key
    in establishing both moods and physical spaces, with the director's
    cluttered and colorful Yerevan home, where even Marcello Mastroianni
    comes by for a visit, a clear highlight.

    Venue: Odessa International Film Festival Production companies:
    Interfilm Production Studio, Araprod, Gemini, Paradise, Arte France
    Cast: Serge Avedikian, Yulia Peresild, Karen Baladov, Zaza Kashibadze,
    Alla Sergiyko, Yuriy Vysotskii, Roman Lutskiy, Konstantin Voytenko,
    Ferdinando Vicentini Orgnani Directors: Serge Avedikian, Olena Fetisova
    Screenwriter: Olena Fetisova Producer: Olena Fetisova Executive
    producer: Volodymyr Kozyr Director of photography: Sergei Mikhalchuk
    Production designer: Vladyslav Ryzhkov Music: Michel Karsky Costume
    designer: Irina Gergel Editors: Alexandra Strauss, Olexandr Shvets
    Sales: Interfilm Production Studio No rating, 95 minutes

    http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/paradjanov-film-review-594629

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