In real life, we humans often become victims of our own emotionality, dreamy nature and naivety. Often, without thinking, we get trapped in the whirlpool of our own fantasies and forget to look at reality objectively. We are admired by things or people, and we cannot analyze to what extent the feelings we experience or convey correspond to reality. There are times when we trust those whom we do not even know, we fall in love with those whose personality and life we really have no idea about, we build towers of dreams without understanding and imagine things that we may never see in reality. As a rule, the first impression is usually wrong. Probably, at least once, we all had such a case, when we soon liked a person whom we had noticed for the first time, and on the contrary, our heart was just as quickly disillusioned with the person whom we were excited about for a moment. This is exactly what happened to Tina and Vato, the characters of Ana Urushadze's student film, "One Man Loved Me" (2012).
This short film is Ana's graduation work. With a very light, cheerful character, the delightful, often funny behavior of the main character, and the action at the end, this film is a perfect example of the comedy genre. However, behind this comedic attitude, there is a rather heartbreaking story. In just twelve minutes, it is perfectly shown how easily you can be heartbroken and lose your hopes with one stroke, be left heartbroken and ashamed, but Ana manages and presents all this to the audience in a very funny way.
The film shows a very small part of an ordinary day – a simple action in the house of two girls living together. From the very first seconds of the film, we hear how enthusiastically the main character Tina (Tamar Bziava) tells her friend Ira (Ia Sukhitashvili) the romantic story she told herself the night before, but all excitement and happiness disappear when her dream Vato ( Erekle Getsadze) will appear in front of her.
When it comes to disappointment, not just Tina is meant here. As we can see in the scene of Vato's visit, after seeing Tina, he looks no less worried and disappointed, one can say deceived. The next day, Tina standing in front of Vato is categorically different from the person she met the night before. “You, what, are pregnant?” is his first reaction when he sees Tina. Like Tina, Vato is so confused with this strange situation that he immediately thinks of some reason and leaves the place as quickly as possible (unfortunately for Tina, he also takes with him the chocolates that he brought for her). It is quite an ironic fact that the blue dress, thanks to which she made Vato remember her so beautifully, turns out to be disastrous for Tina. Because, as we can see in one of the shots, Vato finds her flat with the blue dress hung on the balcony.
The dynamics of the film creates a positive mood for the viewer from the very first seconds. A girl in a torn T-shirt, who is skipping on the rope in the middle of the room and does not stop talking, easily attracts the audience’s attention. Tina's character is extraordinary. Tamar Bziava perfectly manages to show the character’s inner joy and positivity. Her sincere, familiar, extroverted and grotesque nature is worth noting as well as the carelessness with which she shares every detail with her friend. Tina couldn't hide her admiration for how beautiful she looked the night before, how her blue dress suits her, and how the "corset" slimmed her waist that Ira threw into the trash the day before, which Vato touched so gently and romantically during the dance. Every word or action of hers is laughable. The fact that the character so well predisposes towards her is a great credit to both the actress and the director. This whole scene is enhanced by the fact that while telling the story, Tina tries to re-enact all of this, which is why she does not shy away from wearing high-heeled shoes over her thick socks. All this creates a great contrast – the girl with her hair pulled back, her clothes torn, in a blue dress and high-heeled shoes over her socks, is really "fascinating" to look at. Tina's boorish, to say the least, masculine voice ultimately strips her of her feminine tenderness, thus perfecting her "abnormal" character in every way. Tina's energetic and restless character is also evident when she tries to alternate between eating and exercising. She even eats Ira's baked pancakes in a very "aesthetic" way, so that she doesn't forget to make a face mask out of it. In a word, Tina is like a small child who tries to mess up and spoil everything in the house.
The environment shown in the film corresponds exactly to its content. The place in which this restless character is depicted is as chaotic as her. An old Tbilisi house, filled with a lot of small things, plants and beer bottles creates a sense of disorder. Old, peeling walls, posters stuck on them, and damaged wooden floors add to the atmosphere of chaos in the house. All this is combined and complemented by the camera movement, which is no less dynamic.
Along with medium, static shots, there are also abundant close-ups in the film. The camera often follows the actors. The cameraman (Giorgi Shanidze) also uses the subjective camera method at one point. When shooting in close-up, as a rule, the faces of the characters are not completely in the frame. These and several other details leave the impression that the film was shot in a hurry. However, despite the fact that the film is not very good from a technical point of view and does not really stand out in particularly interesting ways, it blends well with the character's nature and, in the end, the film, with all its minor flaws, becomes a comfortable watch for the audience.
One of the key parts of “One Man Loved Me,” hinted by the title itself, is about a prophecy that says there is only one man in the land who truly loves Tina, and that man is at the top of the mountain. Due to the fact that Vato is a mountaineer, dreamer Tina undoubtedly connects her fate with this man, however, after the disappointment caused by Vato's visit, she suddenly remembers her beloved grandfather, whose grave is located on a strange hill, a hill known as "Mountain Peak." In the end, Tina concludes that the only man who truly loved her was her grandfather.
The original ending of the film, a completely dark shot and the sound of cheerful giggles of the girls behind it, keeps the audience in a happy and cheerful mood until the end. Tina will still have hopes, after all, she was loved by at least one real man in this world.
Elene Tsagareishvili
