The Summer of Sangaïlé

I must admit that I’d been really looking forward to this film. I’d mainly been looking forward to seeing a movie from Latvia. That’s what I ended up getting, but I’d had no idea how much emphasis would be put on the author’s feelings. And because of that, the movie presents pointless shots of meadows, a pond, a factory at the end of the surface of water and the whole thing has somewhat of a post-communist aftertaste. Apart from that, two fundamental characters make an appearance in the movie. Well and one of them is Sangaile, who this movie is about. That there’s barely any speaking in this movie, that I can accept. For instance, in the Icelandic movie Rams, it helped. The problem was that I didn’t really understand Sangiale. The same goes for those young guys who catch a fish which they want to roast on fire and when they find out there was some kind of a huge worm inside the fish, they all start taking pictures with it and they turn it into a cool event. This lack of understanding, the post-communist atmosphere and the scarce dialogues unfortunately cannot be saved by a summer mood, sometimes a good musical score, or a rather decent ending, which was the only part that managed to incite some emotions in me, and otherwise interesting acting performances. It’s a pity. (10.12.2015)