BLACKBIRD BLACKBIRD BLACKBERRY
Director: Elene Naveriani
Certificate: 12a
☆☆☆☆☆

ETERO leads a solitary life of routine, an eccentric figure in her small and remote town.

That this middle-aged shopkeeper has never had a boyfriend makes tongues wag, but Etero (Eka Chavleishvili) doesn’t care what her neighbours think.

She has decided to live how she wants to, and ignores anyone who says otherwise.

Etero, we learn, lost her mother when she was young and spent her youth looking after her brother and father. As youth turned into adulthood, these two men-children kept her slaving away.

Whether it was their behaviour that made her unwilling to find a partner – with men like those two, you can understand why she thought no thanks – but also there is the question whether these male chauvinists allowed her to court anyone.

As we meet Etero, peddling cleaning products alongside general chemist goods in her store, we are shown a woman who the world has either ignored or mistreated, but has created a strong-shouldered person who enjoys her own company. Her store stocks goods aimed at women and she avoids male contact. While villagers discuss her nun-like existence behind her back, she doesn’t care – she is in charge, wields her own power as and when she sees fit, and is working hard.

In a curious opening scene, we meet her as she collects blackberries by the edge of a ravine. Disaster strikes: she tumbles over and is lucky to be able to stop her descent. A bizarre piece of magic realism follows, as she appears to witness her own death. It understandably gives her quite the shock, and perhaps prompts what happens next.

Then things go awry when Murman  (Temiko Chichinadze), a delivery driver, appears to give her fresh stock. A passionate embrace leads to her losing her virginity – and now Etero has to work out her own feelings, handle the discovery of sensuousness, without losing her independence.

How she deals with this new horizon is at the crux of the story, and it is told in a believable and straightforward way, studying a complex character and considering the effects her society has had on her life. The awakening of her sexuality, her wonder at how her skin that holds her feels when caressed, and how women can be shoved into a straitjacket by the male/industrial complex to feel they must look and act in certain ways is considered with a light touch, but done so well that it is obvious what Etero has experienced.

A moving story, brilliantly acted by its lead.