‘April’ review: Georgian abortion drama

Déa Kulumbegashvili’s April an emotional drama about what it means to be a woman in the country of Georgia. The country’s laws allow termination of pregnancy only up to 12 weeks – before some people know they are expecting – and even then, rural discrimination prevents many of them from accessing care. Kulumbegashvili sets her character Nina (Ia Sukhitashvili) against this changing backdrop, as an obstetrician who risks her career by driving to remote villages to help pregnant women in need of abortions.

Although the film focuses mainly on the love of Nina’s character, it tells its story in subtle ways, with dramatic confrontations of violence and physical activity that make up the visual fabric. The film portrays life as a transcendent spectacle of birth, death, pregnancy, abortion, and sex, all aspects of women’s experience that Kulumbegashvili combines into a monstrosity – not just narratively, but literally, with a terrible image.

Each time, April it happens with the kind of unrelenting tension that takes it from understated drama to razor-wire thriller, a change of scenery owed not to speeding up its images, but to slowing down and lingering on them for jaw-dropping lengths. It’s a film that provokes irritation, but at the same time, it’s too magnetic to take your eyes off it.

What April about?

Opening sounds and images of April they are squirm-inducing, but quickly addictive. A humanoid figure wanders through a dark and empty space, naked and sullen – like a fetus, or an old woman – as breathy snippets fill the soundscape. These gradually change into the sounds of laughter and children playing, as if this mysterious animal is separated from some phantom family by a thin layer of reality. Even before the film reveals its title, it brings to mind images of abortion and aging, woven together in a nightmare of anxious regret.

Without warning, pouring rain and wary landscapes take us to a hospital room, as Kulumbegashvili captures a woman giving birth under harsh fluorescents – but this beautiful, bloody, painful miracle of life ends in death. The mother and her husband launch an investigation against Nina as to why their child died, putting the OBGYN in the spotlight, and leaving the audience with lingering doubts as to whether she was wrong.

Nina, middle-aged and single, is easily liked by men who want to question her character – especially since she has long been the subject of rumors about illegal abortions. His superiors at the hospital seem willing to look the other way, but only to a point. Given the investigation, who better to throw under the bus than an elderly jitter who already has a black mark on him?

However, none of this stops Nina from continuing to travel to rural areas in her spare time to do what she sees as her duty to uneducated women whose lives would be ruined by getting pregnant out of wedlock—due to threats from local men—even if they wanted to. being mothers first. She represents a choice, or at least an option, where these women do not have, even if it jeopardizes her choice.

April it’s like a dream, but strangely real.

Often Kulumbegashvili’s cuts to the aforementioned, formless creature, reveal long scenes of Nina going to the countryside giving the audience space to be happy – and recuperate. The tension in the movie can be exhausting.

For example, take the long term of abortions. When Nina helps a young mute girl, Nana (Roza Kancheishvili), to end her pregnancy, Kulumbegashvili’s camera – courtesy of cinematographer Arseni Khachaturan – does not focus on any one character, but on the interplay of hands and bodies. The process itself is unclear, but the frame focuses on Nana’s body as she lies on a plastic tablecloth. On the other side of the frame, Nina works diligently to secure the future of the little girl. On the other hand, the girl’s mother, Mzia (Ana Nikolava), holds her and comforts her. It is a sad sequence because of the emotions it expresses and unites by combining the mother’s act of love with the daughter’s cry of pain, in a process that can have its own negative consequences, if it can be found.

Women in April they are all caught between a rock and a hard place, and Nina’s story includes theirs in microcosm. During that time, she becomes a kind of woman, and sometimes even imagines herself as a formless creature (especially when she sleeps with one of her masters), as if her self-image and fear of aging are related. pregnancy and sex. Her personal relationship with pregnancy, however, is not clarified – whether she ever got pregnant, or had an abortion herself – because she seems to isolate that part of herself from other people. Maybe it’s necessary at work.

In Aprilthere is violence and beauty inherent in both pregnancy and abortion, as in nature. Kulumbegashvili seems to often draw this comparison with transitions involving thundering rain and green, flowery landscapes. However, violence of a different kind lurks in every corner, too, and appears suddenly, without warning.

April it makes men’s violence feel gut-wrenching.

At first, when Nina’s suspicious father confronts her, the scene is eerily quiet, until he spits in Nina’s face. The sound it makes, and the impact it has on the process, is as visceral (if not more so) than any birth or abortion imagery Kulumbegashvili presents. Although the male doctors and managers say they are on Nina’s side, this frame makes them disagree with her even with its small, square measure, sitting them on the office table next to the aforementioned father, as if he is a criminal in the case. .

Men’s violence, through their actions, and the obstacles they create, is actually the glue that binds them April together – even when the film turns to empowering carnal entertainment. Nina, maybe to cope with the pressures (or maybe she feels like it) sails all night and takes men to meet them. However, there is a fine line between pleasure and pain, and not in an attractive way. The men try to take advantage of her, and quickly become violent, turning the quiet moments into an oppressively loud one, like gunshots echoing through the night.

There is a similar razor-thin edge between sex and death, if only because of the effects placed on sex – or rather, on women by having sex – which manifests itself in many ways. Sex itself leads to violence. Or it leads to pregnancy, which forces some women to put their lives at risk, whether they have an abortion or not. Much of this is implied or alluded to rather than directly shown. But the thought of this possibility is always there, reinforced by Kulumbegashvili’s frames, which capture the powerful eyes of the men with their unceasing gaze at the camera and the reduced form of the women with their small size in the frame.

April it’s a ghost film that strikes at a very fragile life, compared to images of natural landscapes in ways that suggest (and power) a deep reflection of the body and spirit. It is very sad in the ways that cinema should be when it presents such a complex point about how women face – or the experience defined by gender violence, from the womb to the grave – so bound by fear and personal desires, and weakness. of human independence in a world that easily puts you to shame. A work of art.

April currently seeking distribution.

Update: Sep. 25, 2024, 4:18 pm EDT April was reviewed at the World Premiere at the Venice International Film Festival on Sept. 7, 2024. This post has been updated to originally appear on the New York Film Festival.