Shultes by Bakur Bakuradze

Bakur Bakuradze’s first feature film at the Director’s Fortnight in Cannes is a drama about the lonesome pickpocket Lyosha Shultes, who lives in a run-down Russian city. His daily life is a slow succession of repetitive events : waiting for the next job, watching TV, smoking, jogging… He seems paralysed, doing only the minimum required to earn his living.

It’s only at the end of the film that we are allowed to discover the causes of his distant and solitary behaviour : Lyosha and his girlfriend had a car accident one year earlier, in which she died and he suffered from a head-trauma which still affects his ability to remember. The recent death of his mother is a further strike of fate – an event which he actively tries to forget.

Whilst the puzzle of Lyosha’s personality and story is vague and somewhat incomplete, the emotional desperation of the character is effectively intense, and the cinematography succeeds in showing his struggle in all its depth.

Zsuzsanna Kiràly