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| THE LONELIEST PLANET
(director/writer: Julia Loktev;
screenwriter: based on the
short story “Expensive Trips Nowhere” from the
collection “God Lives in St. Petersburg” by Tom
Bissell; cinematographer: Inti
Briones; editors: Michael Taylor/Julia
Loktev; music: Richard Skelton;
cast: Gael García Bernal (Alex), Hani
Furstenberg (Nica), Bidzina Gujabidze (Dato);
Runtime: 113; MPAA Rating: NR; producers: Jay
Van Hoy/Lars Knudsen/Helge Albers/Marie Therese
Guirgis; Sundance Selects/IFC; 2011-Germany/USA-in
English and Georgian, with English
subtitles)
"An intriguing film, that has a sense of poignancy, sparse dialogue and offers a deep suspicion of love if it's untested." Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz Russian-born, Colorado-raised filmmaker Julia Loktev ("Day Night Day Night") writes and directs this slow-moving minimalist romance story based on a variation of the Ernest Hemingway 1936 story “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber”, that Tom Bissell based on his short story “Expensive Trips Nowhere”. It's superbly photographed by Chilean lenser Inti Briones. Comfortable
middle-class American kooky aimless carefree hipster
world travellers, an engaged couple in their thirties,
Alex (Gael García Bernal) and Nica (Hani
Furstenberg, NYC born but Israeli
based), are summer vacationing in
the Caucasus. They hire the gruff but amiable
private local mountain guide Dado (Bidzina
Gujabidze, real-life mountaineer)
to lead them on a back-pack hike across the
stunningly beautiful wilderness of the Khevi
region of the Republic of Georgia. Through the
couple's playful actions, they appear to be very
much in love. Nothing is revealed about their lives
until a life-changing event happens when
the couple encounter a rifle threatening trio of
mountain man and Alex makes a cowardly gesture that
lasts only a few seconds and then corrects himself,
but even though it's never mentioned again the
couple's relationship changes forever and it becomes a
different movie than expected as the pleasure trip is
now filled with awkward silences and the love between
the two dissipates. It's a
relationship movie that drifts into rocky terrain as
a tale of two characters who must wrestle with the
surprising moment of truth that has suddenly changed
their romance. An
intriguing film, that has a sense of poignancy, sparse
dialogue and offers a deep suspicion of love
if it's untested. It seems to advocate that travel
together either brings a couple closer or further
apart. The title is meant as a comical ironic reference to the Lonely Planet travel-guides used mostly by backpackers like Alex and Nica. REVIEWED ON 11/27/2012 GRADE: B+ Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews" © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED DENNIS SCHWARTZ |