To twist fear and terror into something to be laughed at, even if only on an imaginary level, is no easy task, and the directors of Aurora [+lee también:
entrevista: Nikola Boshnakov y Georgi-…
ficha de la película], which has celebrated its world premiere at the Sofia International Film Festival, know this full well. Perhaps for that very reason, they turn to an eclectic mix of genres – from burlesque and political satire to melodrama and pure drama – in an attempt to strike the right tone and style for each and every moment and nuance of the love story they have set out to tell, as narrated against a backdrop of totalitarianism and harsh repression. Yet the humour inevitably wins out, and considering the helmers’ filmographies so far, it could hardly be otherwise: Georgi-Jackie Stoev is known locally for his mockery-driven aesthetic, from features to TV miniseries, while Nikola Boshnakov has playfully experimented with docu-comedies and light-heartedness even within dry environmental themes (see 2006’s Silence Is Golden). They then joined forces in the ideology-free portrait of an artist and his time spent between two political regimes, My Uncle Luben [+lee también:
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entrevista: Nikola Boshnakov, Georgi-J…
ficha de la película], again adopting a wry tone.

In Aurora, they boldly toy not only with their own national history by making fun of totalitarian monsters, but also with an emblematic signifier from the wider world by reducing the symbol of the October Revolution, the cruiser Aurora, to a mere gimmick – a clever way to defang the ghosts of the past by converting them into comic tropes.

In this vein, the spiciness of the urban legend competes on an equal footing with the caricatured portrayals of the main and supporting characters, and both layers vie for the audience’s attention amid an abundance of other details. The plot is relatively simple, albeit somewhat convoluted – in the years immediately following the rise of “people power” in Bulgaria, the beautiful daughter of an exiled, politically unreliable bourgeois, Maria (Konstantina Georgieva), whose apartment has been nationalised and appropriated by a lecherous colonel (Hristo Garbov), is forced into prostitution to make ends meet. Meanwhile, she is the object of desire for a famous lesbian sculptor (Koyna Ruseva), a young, idealistic Italian journalist called Marcello (Brenno Placido), sent by his home Communist Party to observe the “progress” first hand, and the same sleazy colonel himself – whom she cannot resist slapping because of his arrogance, an act that lands her in a labour camp. The dramatic sacrifice the sculptor makes to get Maria out is the tragicomic culmination of the movie, ultimately falling back on the romantic cliché that love conquers all.

The array of colourful, Wes Andersonian characters accompanying the action – from the slapstick bellboy and the sullen colonel’s servant, through Stoev himself at a nomenklatura meeting, to Franco Nero as a bankrupt banker-turned-fortune teller – provides the film with its texture and offers a humorous portrait of an absurd era adrift between conflicting ideologies. Against this backdrop, the cheesy and all-too-abrupt romance between Maria and Marcello feels like a mere spoke in the wheel of the film’s detached irony, a flaw somewhat compensated for by the sober portrayal of the sculptor: at a time when gay people were imprisoned if discovered, she is depicted as an artistic authority regardless of her sexuality, fully aware of the power that comes with it. In this regard, Aurora is resolute in its refusal to label its characters as victims of the regime – something perhaps made possible primarily by the distance afforded by time. Yet overall, the movie represents a refreshing shift for Bulgarian and post-totalitarian cinema in general.

Aurora was produced by Bulgaria’s Ars Digital, in co-production with Italy’s Bielle Re.