From today's Bulgaria, where old Communist State inequities merge with new Capitalist horrors, parallel stories of theft & free enterprize. Margita Gosheva is calmly indomitable as the High School English teacher out to uncover a classroom thief, and at home, trying to come up with a loan payment to save the family house after being blind-sided by a husband who’s been pocketing the monthly payments she gives him to handle. What follows is more Murphy’s Law than modern Job parable, though debuting married filmmakers Kristina Grozeva & Petar Valchanov might disagree. But the series of financial disasters are real enough (a true story lurks behind ths) as Gosheva lowers herself again & again, to get thru the latest crisis. (Interestingly, and no doubt accurately for Bulgaria, she never blames her spouse.) Scooping coins out of a fountain to raise a couple of bucks embarrassing but benign; getting involved with a vicious, sexually depraved loan shark considerably scarier. Yet I’d opt for her cheerful second employer (she does translating on the side) as the biggest prick. The film, a big player on the International Fest Circuit, is highly accomplished if a bit overextended, but finds a trifecta of a finish: ironic; cynical; and, in its way, even Happy Ending-ish.
DOUBLE-BLL/LINK: Grozeva & Valchanov would find just the pace & variety needed here in their next film GLORY/’16. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2025/01/glory-slava-2016.html
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