NIKOLO GHVINIASHVILI, NIKA GONGADZE, CENTER, IN HOLY ELECTRICITYTATO KOTETISHVILI: HOLY ELECTRICITY (2024) NEW DIRECTORS/NEW FILMS 2025Gems from junkTRAILERThis film from Georgia makes such good use of documentary elements and authentic locales it's tempting to think what's going on is simply real. Sometimes the documentary elements take over, and sometimes a scene is extravagant and unexpected. All through there is humor and warmth and a sympathy for the eccentric and humble, like a cute kitten, or an old lady who has a bunch of cats and dogs.
We begin with a scrapyard, and this is a fast introduction to director Kotetishvili's point of view, because it's looked at with wide open and sympathetic eyes. There are groups of people too, and some Tblisi street scenes. Sometimes orange seems to be the dominant color.
The scrapyard, in an old car, is where Gonga (Nikolo Ghviniashvili) and Bart (Nika Gongadze) live and sleep, the odd couple who will dominate the narrative. Gonga is a tall, lanky, long-haired boy. His father has recently died, and he has joined his cousin, the short, chubby, debt-ridden Bart, who in a later conversation we learn is trans. Going through a pile of metal, Gonga finds a big box of rusted crosses that they clean and paint and equip with multi-colored LED lighting and sell successfully from door to door, making money to pay off Bart's debts.
This part ends when Gonga leaves Bart in disgust he gambles away all their money following a drunken party. Gonga winds up with a Roma girl for a while. We witness a string of dialogues where he struggles with expressing an interest in her. Either he's too shy or he's just not sure what he feels, and eventually she disappears. Along the way they go selling crosses, and when we constantly gliimpse bigger lighted crosses along the road, we reealize the Gonga-Bart ones are part of something bigger and glamorous, halfway between religous kitsch and the art of Dan Flavin. They are elegant objects. But a goldmine? Not quite.
While Gonga is endlessly questioning the Roma girl about her family and her preferences, Bart's debtors are getting tough, and one of the most memorable scenes, handsomely framed and centered, shows two of the latter questioning an upside down Bart hanging by his feet, begging to be let down, while one of them is scrutniizing the contents of his wallet and finding that he's listed as Gender: Female.
There's a hanging scene a bit earlier with Gonga, who's long and physical, and has hair that never loses its long sleek dangle. He's seen on hanging from a large crane at the scrapyard. The next time you see him he's wearing a light cast on one arm, and it's not cosmetic. He fell off the hook of that crane and lightly fractured, he tells the gypsy girl, his radius.
This is a meandering tale that takes detours like that, and dips on the wild side mildly enough. It makes me think back, for no reaason, perhaps, to two gypsy movies. First is Frank Pierson's glamorous 1978 Hollywood saga,
King of the Gypsies, Eric Roberts' impressive screen debut, with Susan Sarandon and Brooke Shields. Maybe it was corny but it drew me in and I can remember where I was sitting and who with, a sign it was a memorable impression. Exqctly ten years later there was a bigger, more authentic-seeming saga,
Time of the Gypsies, which also absorbed me, almost wore me down, wartching it at home at home. At Cannes, it won Kusturica the Best Director award.
Holy Electricity isn't like these. Apart from only being glancingly about gypsies, it's a scrapyard production, made of bits and pieces found here and there. The filmmaker shows both humor and sympathy in unusual measure in choosing his scraps. But this strength is also a weakness, because at several points the narrative seems to dissolve, and with it our patience may fray and our attention wander. But it's a promising beginning, and it won an award at Locarno to prove that. His work here is notable for a nice combination of catholicity of taste and the careful composition of every shot.
Holy Electricity/Tsminda Electroenergia, 95 mins. debuted at Locarno Aug. 11, 2024, winning the Golden Leopard in its Filmmakers of the Present section. Later it showed at Thessoloniki,Tallinn Black Nights, Mannheim-Heidelberg, and Montreal International Documentary Festival. Screened for this review as part of New Directors/New Films, MoMA and Film at Lincoln Center.
Showtimes:
Saturday, April 12
5:00pm at FLC, Walter Reade Theater
Sunday, April 13
3:00pm at MoMA, Titus Theater 2
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