Infrequent coarse language and nudity
Kazakhstan/Poland/Switerserland, 2008
Genre: Comedy, drama
Director: Sergei Dvortsevoy
Written by Dvortsevoy and Gennady Ostrovsky.
Featuring: Tolepbergen Baisakalov, Ondas Besibasov, Samal Wsliamova, Askhat
Kuchencherekov, Bereke Turganbayev
Language: Kazakh and Russian with English subtitles.
Running time: 99 minutes.
“Tulpan,” Un Certain Regard winner at Cannes 2008, is Sergey Dvortsevoy’s first feature. Born in Kazakhstan, his documentaries are about people in the old Soviet republics living between tradition and the future. Sounds unpromising, but for those of us who loved The Story of the Weeping Camel or The Cave of the Yellow Dog this film is an unlikely gem from the world’s largest land-locked country.
Asa, newly discharged from the Russian navy, has come to live with his sister Samal, her husband, Ondas, and their children. As the story opens, Asa, Ondas and his buddy Boni are negotiating for the hand of Tulpan (“Tulip”). Asa enthrals them with tales of the seahorse and octopus. They offer 10 sheep and a chandelier. But “no” the bride-tobe is fussy because his ears are too big. This means trouble, because the local sheep herding boss won’t let him have a flock of his own until he marries – and Tulpan is the only marriageable girl around.
Asa’s coming of age as he battles to solve this conundrum and to learn to be a sheep herder is only part of the attraction of this film. The true hero of the story is the landscape and the often comic happenings of this fast-disappearing way of life. Dvortsevoy’s nonprofessional cast let us witness not one but two lengthy struggles with a suffering ewe as she gives birth. We listen entranced to Asa’s niece sitting all alone on the leeward side of the family yurt, singing a Kazakh song into the wind. We laugh as the local vet arrives with a sick camel calf in the side-car of his motorbike with the worried camel mother following.
Whether Asa gets the girl or not simply isn’t that important.
Sources: Salon.com, European films.net, Chicago-Tribune.
Compiled by Owen Tilbury