When Will, an American satellite mapping-engineer working for Google struggles to order breakfast in a small cafe in a remote comer of Armenia he is rescued by Gadarine who translates his request for an omelet. She is a local photographer and like Will is constantly on the move searching. Whilst he is looking to help shape the future she is looking to record the past. Both of them are loners …. he reminisces about growing up in Northern California and taking long walks in his family’s vineyard trying to get lost… whilst she is trying to escape the conventional life pattern that an Armenian woman from a poor family is expected to follow.
They become traveling companions which inevitable leads them into being lovers too. However this debut movie from filmmaker Braden King with its very sparse narrative is much more a love affair with the sweeping vistas of the Armenian landscape rather than about these two lonely souls who get thrown together almost by accident. Having said that, the two actors Ben Foster (‘The Messenger’) and Klubna Azabal (‘Incendies’) give excellent low-key yet thought-provoking performances that resonate that you (almost) forgive the fact that at 121 minutes running time, it is a good 30 minutes too long.
King embellished the piece with some intermittent poetic narration (relayed in the God-like tones of Peter Coyote) which threw me completely as it implied that there was possible a whole other layer to the movie that I wasn’t getting!
One to watch when you feel like being quiet and reflective……
Available via Amazon
★★★★★★
