Bashtata

Good Bulgarian-Greek dramatic comedy. The relationship between Pavel, the photographer, and his father Vasil, the painter, is in the core of the story, from the funeral in the beginning until the end of the road movie, full of diverging views on after life, chases, disagreements, with extraordinary events and homemade quince jam. There is also a parallel relationship that we do not see but just listen: between Pavel and his pregnant wife. Due cable tv problems I had the film suddenly interrupted in its very last scene, which I notoced that connected well both stories but I do not know if it answered why Pavel did not tell her he was going to his mother's funeral.

What a dire spectacle this was! The film succeeds in providing a glimpse into the grotesque Bulgarian reality of today. Ignorance, crude behaviour and manners, dishonesty and utter lack of empathy pervade every aspect of life; throughout the whole film you will not hear the words "please" or "thank you", as if they have been erased from the language. Harking back to the inherited values from 50 years of the "Socialist paradise" and thrown into acute focus, you see the disinterested police force, which nevertheless doesn't fail to be brutish, the corrupt doctors who defraud the health system, the unscrupulous new age mystic charlatans praying on the poor, the brainless "cultural workers" of the socialist age, the incompetent new "professionals" who can't turn in a piece of quality work....all this is convincingly bound together through the incessant lies of the son and the imbecilic delusions of the father. Cinematically, the film is sound, with good all round performances and unsparing cinematography, but as a Bulgarian myself I wish I had not seen it; it disheartens you so!