13/11/2009

Georgian director Nana Dzhordzhadze’s films have served as an intimate guide for foreigners to her beloved homeland for a long time. From her breakthrough Robinsonada or My English Grandfather, her characters are mostly outsiders who upon suddenly ending up in the Georgian countryside undergo a series of strange incidents when faced with the local culture.

Her next internationally acclaimed works, A Chef in Love (1996) and 27 Missing Kisses (2000), basically follow the same line. Since then, Dzhordzhadze has been silent, but now comes a new magical story about love, romantic madness and the Georgian spirit.

The Rainbowmaker [+see also:
trailer
film profile] is a melodramatic fairytale in which the absurd rules. As usual, the action takes place in a small village, where the beautiful Elena (Anna Antonowicz) works as a waitress at the railway station restaurant. Her husband Datho (Merab Ninidze) has been wrongly imprisoned and her stepfather takes care of their sweet little children, while having late-night conversations with Death.

Elena throws herself into a romantic affair with a macho circus artist who is supposed to take her away from her boring provincial life. Then Datho returns, only to realize that no one loves him anymore – even his children are disrespectful. Until one day, when he is struck by lightning and suddenly acquires the wondrous power to change the weather. It starts snowing in the middle of summer and Datho manages to regain the love of his family, thus leading the movie to its expected happy ending.

While The Rainbowmaker is as mystical and picturesque as Dzhordzhadze’s previous works, the “typical” Georgian atmosphere is turned into exotic kitsch; Dzhordzhadze’s signature style becomes an automatic tag that attempts to be simultaneously widely accepted and unique; and even the characters are clichés of stereotypical Georgians.

The Rainbowmaker is structured like the kind of romantic comedy that would be a hit at the box office, but is hindered by Dzhordzhadze’s obvious pretentions to create an original arthouse film. Ultimately, one leaves the cinema with the uneasy feeling of having bought Georgian souvenirs cheaply made in China.

Spoken in Russian and Georgian, the film is majority produced by 27 Films Production (Germany), with Fora-film M (Russia), Lemming Film (Netherlands) and Blind Spot Pictures (Finland). It is sold worldwide by Bavaria Film International.