In Valeska Grisebach’s last film, since 2017a German construction worker in Bulgaria explores the hills surrounding a Bulgarian village on foot and horseback, navigating a rugged landscape full of wary natives and rowdy foreigners, a quiet figure looking down on his rivals in a series of men’s fights. Although set in the present day, it also refers to the wider dynamics between EUHaves and have-nots, the film has an accurate title Western. His long-awaited new feature is also set in Bulgaria, and is a moral tale about modern economic realities shaped around classic Hollywood genres – A Dreamed Adventure can be called Noir. Layered and relaxed, it eventually accumulates interest and value throughout 167– a moment of action. It was worth the wait, and more.
Syuleyman Letifov, who played the local conductor Westernit is the key to a familiar face among the German Grisebach’s uneducated Bulgarian actors (credits in German and Bulgarian). He plays Said, a member of the Muslim Pomak minority in Bulgaria, who drives to Svilengrad, near the border of Greece and Turkey, in the film’s dramatic opening sequence, a car journey through the changing terrain due to the weather, an ever-changing mountain that offers the opportunity to pull down from the farm to the leading casino on closed arterial roads, arterial artery roads. that partially reflects the brutal capitalist revolution of the society in which the story will take place.
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Said is there to buy diesel on the black market from a so-called smuggler .““Raven” – a small deal for Said, who lived in Svilengrad during the early gold rush years. 90After the fall of the Iron Curtain, when even pay toilets were big business, and all you had to do to get a girl, one local gangster recalls surprisingly, was open your car door. These days, Polish women who work in a nearby solar panel factory are shuttled daily to and from the otherwise abandoned hotel, a former mafia hangout that may still have a cache of weapons stored somewhere on the wall, like ancient artifacts. Raven is rumored to be involved in human trafficking, making her a rival to Svilengrad king Iliya (Stoicho Kostadinov), with whom Said has a long history. He’s been given a chance to start making real money again, but it seems he wants to stay in town long enough to find the sister of a man who was brutally murdered 30 years ago.
In the meantime, Said meets and warmly greets his old acquaintance Veska (Yana Radeva), an archaeologist who invites him to help at her excavation site in the nearby hills. He has extended the same invitation to many locals, most of whom have ties to the local crime lords, who can use the old man’s place as a way to smuggle, or entice a girl to come to one of their parties. Veska, an educated and well-traveled woman, is the subject of some suspicion in the town, but she is a local and has a long history with the best men of Svilengrad; when Said is not in the story, surprisingly and mysteriously, Veska is interested in his unfinished business. Next is the distaff type Red Harvestas Veska pokes her nose into everyone’s business, and refuses to take sides even as she cultivates relationships and engages in side projects. While his excavations are on hold – the mayor drags his feet as he opens the road to the site, probably expecting to be bribed or called in for favors – Veska is busy digging up secrets and reviving memories.
Before he leaves the film, Said’s job at Veska’s place is to operate a metal detector, and Grisebach’s approach is equally consistent with the values of the events. In the ongoing scene in both Western and here, the actor leaves his abode at night to wander around, invariably ending up sitting empty-handed at a table full of empty raika glasses, soaking up old stories in the lamplight of long hot summer nights. This happened several times Westernfor both Said and Veska, and each scene is different – sometimes the women share memories of being mistreated in the Wild West 90s; sometimes proud men are courting – but they have the same sense of community life created by the viewer just because of the calmness. Grisebach, like his characters, has an endless curiosity, and his high-class work in Bulgaria opens up endlessly provocative places – a luxurious Persian-style hotel, a ruined medieval tower, an empty strobe-lit night club, plastic chairs collected for a vending machine – all filled with people dressed in bright fashion or Grisebach. and he put it in his place.
Although his films appear once in ten years from him 2005 success Longingwhich makes it difficult to associate him with any peers, Grisebach in the early years of his career, at first 2000s, was strongly associated with the analytical rigor of the Berlin School. Like Christian Petzold, he coolly enumerates the microtransactions – envelopes of money, donated rides home – that make up the book of public relations in a market economy. The layout of A Dreamed Adventure oblique – like Raymond Chandler, Grisebach is more interested in atmosphere than expression. With plenty of speaking parts, and backstories reluctantly revealed by characters, the film’s plot clock is often muted, but if you have to pay attention to any one thing in a given scene, it’s the character’s mood. Just as Veska’s team must carefully sift through the dust from their finds to find what they unearthed, A Dreamed Adventure allows its scenes to be open slowly, cautiously, and all kinds of positions will focus on small acts of contempt or disdain. Veska is an expert in de-escalating tense situations without overpowering, finding release valves where violence meets; he also lets loose his own anger when he recounts his painful experiences in patient night monologues, hot but not angry.
Despite its dryness, Western he was soft-hearted, finally exposed by stopping the negotiations between the Bulgarian reception and the German employee seeking communication. A Dreamed Adventure it is humane, and very expansive, meeting at the end in a deep consideration of gender roles, expressed by Veska in both word and deed, as she pulls her team out of the dog-eat-dog world of Svilengrad and envelops them in her community as a stay-at-home mother, protective and compassionate.
As a warm and feminine journey to the new frontiers of capitalism, A Dreamed Adventure panoramic as Toni Erdmannand like Maren Ade’s film, it always returns to the works in its center: Letifov, with his piercing John Wayne and cherubic dimples, and especially Radveva, in his first film performance, with his wise, weathered face and steel backbone. He would have been a star even if Grisebach hadn’t found him and put him in the film, but the cinema he made has benefited.
