Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry

This female-centric romantic drama from Georgian filmmaker Elene Naveriani boasts a superlative central performance by Eva Chavleishvili as Etero who runs a shop in an isolated village.

She has missed out on marriage and motherhood and now at 48 years old contemplates the future without much enthusiasm while all the time relishing her independence.

A neat fatal fall while picking blackberries beside a deep ravine, forces her to confront her own mortality and she keeps seeing portents of her demise.

She is surrounded by female friends who regard her rather suspiciously as an oddity.

Her sensual awakening comes when she is drawn to a married delivery driver (Tempo Chichinadze),who is a frequent visitor to her shop. As he comes from outside the community their affair has to be cloaked in secrecy. She has to decide whether to keep within her comfort zone or embark on a liaison which risks alienating her even further from her friends.

Believing she may have symptoms of the same cancer that lead to her mother’s death she heads off to see a doctor in Tbilisi, leading to Naveriani’s surprise denouement.

As a portrait of an indomitable woman who experiences late flowering sensuality after being starved of affection for years, the film casts an indelible grip. The unadorned observation of the physical aspects of the relationship in which middle-aged bodies are shown without artifice is one of the most hypnotic aspect of Naveriani’s vision.

This makes an impressive follow on from the director’s first feature Wet Sand, which was made in 2021 and carries forward some of the themes which preoccupy her.