The Summer of Frozen Fountains (2015, Dir. Vano Burduli):
However much we might want to deny it, one of the attractions of foreign cinema is catching the whiff of the exotic. Go ahead and genuflect about filmmaking talent and major artistic statements, but sometimes the simplest pleasure you can get from a film is a glimpse of an unfamiliar place. Such a glimpse opens up The Summer of Frozen Fountains, as we gaze upon the cobblestone streets of Tbilisi, Georgia (the country, not the state) seen through the viewfinder of an old-school camera, the camera manned by a very old-school photographer (Shota Kristesashvili). Each day he takes one photo from the same position on his balcony, marking the almost invisible passing of seasons, and the visual metaphor hints at what The Summer of Frozen Fountains is all about — capturing a panorama of a city that is living at the speed of life.
Director Vano Burduli is a relative newcomer (this is only his second feature film), but he does have an eye for his environs, and an ambition for interlinked narrative. As we get settled into the old photographer’s neighborhood, we come across a bunch of characters all connected by geographic proximity and romantic entanglement, like an Altman film on Quaaludes. Restless businessman Zura (Dato Darchia) is carrying on an affair with his downstairs neighbor Lika (Ia Sukhitashvili), while his wife Diana (Nato Murvanidze) is preoccupied with her news broadcast career. Meanwhile, their 13-year-old son Nicholas (Dati Khrikadze) has obsessions of his own: when he’s not letting the air out of Lika’s tires in retribution for his dad’s adultery, he’s fully absorbed in his project of tracking down U2’s Bono, and getting the man’s autograph for his girlfriend Sally (Lika Sturua). Nicholas’s brother Dato, who lit out for the American dream years before, is now in a Tennessee prison, and his wife Annie (Nutsa Kukhianidze) is torn between moving to America to be near him when he’s released, and caring for her increasingly infirm father, who happens to be the old-school photographer with the old-school camera. Fittingly enough, Annie works as a customs agent at Tbilisi’s airport (Lika is her colleague), where she wistfully contemplates the travelers coming and going, venturing everywhere she would like to go. Then there’s Diana’s chauffeur, whose brother Yogi has just passed away, with Yogi’s son expected to take over the family bakery — only Yogi’s son has his heart set on going to the Naval Academy (“Has this town ever produced an admiral?” one of his family members scoffs.) Yogi’s other brother Gio (Sandro Gabilaia) has his own headaches; when he finds an unknown necklace under his bed, he suspects he’s being cuckolded, even though he hasn’t necessarily been faithful himself. Observing all this to-and-froing are two nameless ne’er-do-wells on the street, one of them a harmonica player (composer Levan Yosebidze, whose bluesy riffs are the soundtrack’s most notable feature), the other lacking an affiliation to anything but the scrawny kitten he carries around with him.
That’s a lot of pieces to maneuver on the board, and Burduli is in no hurry to let his story unfold — all the connections between the characters are revealed bit by bit, with little to no fanfare. Wry stoicism is the prevailing mood, and as the film proceeds it becomes clear that everyone is dealing with dashed expectations of one kind or another. Even youthful, smitten Nicholas and Sally face a rocky future, as Sally’s parents are preparing to move the family to chilly Norway. Fittingly enough, the one element that threatens to shake things up is a foreigner: Irish photojournalist Brian (Andrius Paulavicius), who has arrived in town looking for inspiration. “These foreigners live like in the movies,” one of the ne’er-do-wells grumbles, but Brian is soon prompting Hollywood-style dreaming on the part of the other characters — when Brian meets up with the old photographer, he gets pulled into a tentative romance with Annie, offering her another path out of Tbilisi, and he might also be the key to realizing Nicholas’s goal of contacting Bono.
Despite the plot’s soap-opera elements, it’s best to look elsewhere if you’re seeking dramatic fireworks. The film’s tensest moment turns out to be a joke, as Brian witnesses a man jumping off a bridge in what appears to be a suicide attempt — only to discover that the man is swimming towards a party barge in the middle of the river. When Brian discovers that none of the mailboxes in the town is serviced, he’s incredulous. “How do you get mail?” he asks Annie. Her shrugged-off answer: “We all go to the post office.” Not all of the relationships under siege in the film survive, but most of the trauma is handled in a similarly deadpan manner. Misfortune is greeted with a weary sigh, and everyone moves on. The Summer of Frozen Fountains isn’t a glumfest, by any means — Burduli excels at off-hand moments of whimsy, as when Nicholas invites Sally for a horse ride, only to discover that horses aren’t available, and resorts to imagination and a stray tree branch to compensate. Tbilisi might not be anyone’s vision of a postcard wonderland, but there’s a certain magic to the town’s nightscapes, and moments such as the one in which Brian and Annie stumble upon a group of folk singers and stand transfixed, both entranced by the music and their proximity to each other. “Like everyone, I’m looking for Paradise on Earth,” Brian quips, and every so often, the film brings us close to that paradise.
Despite its longeurs, The Summer of Frozen Fountains manages to hold our interest in these characters’ fates, even though very few of their stories resonate past the end credits. Most convincing is Shota Kristesashvili’s old photographer — he’s onscreen for maybe a total of five minutes, but his interactions with Annie and his bleary blue eyes betray a lifetime’s accumulation of tenderness and regret. The chemistry between Brian and Annie is less convincing (they’re not helped by clunky English dialogue that contains groaners such as “You have the most extraordinary smile”), and many of the other actors flit in and out of the movie without getting much chance to make an impression. “Being in this city is like being in a movie,” Brian observes at one point, and Burduli wants you to believe it, while also undercutting the usual expectations you might carry into a movie. Eventually, most of the plot threads trail off without resolution, which is the point of the film, as its title helpfully reminds us: “Remember that winter when all the fountains were frozen?” one of the ne’er-do-wells sighs. “Ah, that was beautiful.” The Summer of Frozen Fountains evokes a world that is progressing on its own sweet time, forever poised between stasis and calamities that might never arrive. While it’s not too difficult to get on the film’s wavelength, one might thirst for something a bit more substantial to hold onto. Perhaps it’s not fair to contrast Burduli’s work with a classic like Aleksei German’s My Friend Ivan Lapshin, but while both movies paint an offbeat portrait of a particular place and time, Ivan Lapshin is charged with regret, dramatic stakes, and a sense that life is changing in irrevocable fashion. Life might throw a few curveballs in The Summer of Frozen Fountains, but its characters, much like the film’s scenery, remain placid and impassive. Sometimes an exotic vista isn’t quite enough.
