The main component of a film is the closely related story line. In order to consider a film completed, it is necessary to raise some kind of conflict in it and the developed events should be similar to the ways of its resolution.
Ioseb (Soso) Bliadze's film "A Room Of My Own" (2022) does not fit these standards. It's not a single film, but a collage of two films and several themes, and it's missing more than enough to make it look like a complete, edited, composite work.
The main storyline of the first part depicts Beka and Tina’s love story. "Love" is said a little too loudly. Their relationship is far from the emotions that Georgian poets and writers often describe in their works. It's neither platonic nor self-sacrificing, it's just lust and reckless actions with consequences. Beka is a coward, a person dependent on people's opinion, and Tina is not even worth arguing with someone else. They are not moving in together. The woman's dreams fell down. Tina loves Beka, and when a man refuses to live with her, she thinks of herself as an oppressed person. None of them realizes that the real victim is Datuna – Tina's ex-husband and Beka's pal. A decision made in an affective state made him a prisoner. Nor do they think that once they have betrayed someone, they will do the same to someone else. The mistakes made in the past are like a black mark on both of them. Although Datuna appears as a victim, his behavior is not justified either. Instead of letting the woman go, he stabbed her. She should have been his and no one else's. This is a behavior of a typical violator that cannot be romanticized or condoned.
Tina has nowhere to go, she doesn't have Beka, neither does she have a good relationship with her mother, she doesn't have any friends in this part. She is alone, and so much that she sees the only way out in returning to the rented house.
Ending the film on a failed love story and turning it into a short film would probably be the director’s best decision. Luckily or not, he continued the story in a different way. The second part leaves the impression of being unprocessed and falls out of the existing rhythm. It seems they didn't think about the script in advance and it was created during the filming process. The main point of the film, the reason why it was filmed, is not visible. In one of the interviews, the director was asked what inspired him to create the film, and he answered that it was a beautiful house. The whole work looks like the implementation of a quickly made decision. It's like they had some free time and didn't know what to do, so they made a movie. Everything happened in such a narrow circle that it seems that the director combines the role of cameraman, actor and screenwriter in one. There is not much thought about the long and close shots, nor about the script, nor the lighting is outstanding, it is an ordinary middle-class film with a small budget. The amount spent on filming is directly proportional to the content of the story.
In the second part, Tina returns to the screen completely different. She seems to be trying to start a new life. Beka is nowhere to be seen and she falls for her roommate, struggles with herself, and her other self is revealed. Her mother also died and she really had no one left. Here comes a new topic – pandemic. Tina's mother died of coronavirus. There is a curfew outside, everything is locked exactly as if everyone lives in one room and nothing happens outside this room.
The sense of sympathy and catharsis is lost due to the fragmented plot. The audience no longer shares the actors' pain or joy. The film has almost no genre. It is neither a drama, nor a melodrama, and even more so, not a comedy.
Anyway, what would be a good version of this movie? Perhaps, if the director had made two independent short films and had not started looking for threads connecting the two different parts. The first film would be about Tina and Beka's unrequited love, passion and ultimate longing, with a more extended and developed plot, while the second would be about how people living in the same house can fall for each other.
No matter how many parts the film has, it has one main character, Tina. A person who lacks warmth. She cannot find her place. First she tries to find comfort and peace with Beka and then with Magi. In the end, she stays alone, not knowing her fate.
Although she has a new life, she is not happy here either. A feeling of constant inadequacy and dissatisfaction comes with it. Directly or indirectly, she still blames herself for everything, but still leaves no reason for anyone to know. She has no one, nothing but the house left by Magi. The girl went to America and left only a part of her feelings in Georgia. She will probably start a new life abroad. And Tina is a typical traitor – she betrays her husband, Beka, Magi, and in the end, she will probably betray herself.
And what is the film ultimately about? About the failed love? About loneliness? On insatiable passions? Emigration? Pandemic? On homosexuality? Nothing or everything? – Probably, more about nothing.
The title "A Room Of My Own" means nothing. Especially when the story goes beyond the room. The film must have been short. The story line is divided, interrupted, intermingled, and events unfold in different ways. It seems the parts were filmed in different periods and then tried to connect them together. For example, the shots of going to a party during the unfolding events have nothing to do with it, they are cut out.
The door opens and everything starts again. But now the main characters of the story will be Ketevan and Tina. It was as if nothing has changed, or nothing has happened, and the story was just an illusion of the audience.
"A Room Of My Own" starts with opening the door and ends with opening the door. As if nothing has happened. In this way, it is associated with one of the laws of physics. While the start and end points are the same, the displacement is zero. Nothing happened here either, as if there were no shots and instead of a script, there is a blank sheet of paper on the director's desk. The film can be described exactly like that, in one word – nothing.
Barbare Kalaijishvili
