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ABSURDISTAN
(Germany/Azerbaijan, 2007, 88 min, color, 35mm)
Directed by Veit Helmer. Written by Veit Helmer, Zaza Buadze. Starring Maximilian Mauff, Kristyna Malerova, Assun Planas, Kaghat Azelarab, Suzana Petricevic.

If you were to tell me a film using less than 15 minutes of dialog was the best thing I would see at the Sundance Film Festival, I might laugh and then spit on you. There would at least have been a long, crazy laugh.

But you’d be right. Absurdistan is — and I hate saying this — a wonderful display of the strength of international film and storytelling over ours here in the States. I love American film, and in a year in which we’re given two of the best American movies in years (No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood), we’re still behind.

The movie just gets everything right. It’s beautiful, hilarious and heartwarming, but most of all it’s charming. Absurdistan gives us a look at the lengths to which man will go to woo the love of a woman or to simply get in her pants. The story follows a young pair of soon-to-be lovers, Aya and Temelko. Their homeland survives off the hard work of the women, the sexual vitality of the men, and a slow but steady water supply from a pipeline feeding out of the mountains.

But once the water begins to run dry, so does the women’s patience. Aya takes her stand against Temelko, telling him that they can’t be joined — in the biblical sense — for the first time until the water problem is solved. The town’s women notice this standoff and begin to do the same with their lazy, sexually addicted husbands. No water, no sex. This is when all hell breaks loose.

Temelko, eager to get the water problem fixed, fights the issue on his own while the town’s men just find new ways to be useless and pout. The initial sadness turns to rage and the once peaceful community becomes divided by chromosomes with only Temelko exploring ways to solve the true issue.

What’s amazing about Veit Helmer’s film is that he moves the narrative through the guidance of his two main characters, Aya and Temelko. The pair’s voices follow all the action with exception of an occasional break for dialog. The move is bold and extremely well-done. There is no end to Helmer’s imagination. Every scene packs enough properly constructed choreography and skillful acting to tell the story without the subtitles or audio.

The story is an allegory, so it becomes absurd — get it … never mind — at times, but it never feels out of place. Whether this was a fictional or real city forgotten by the rest of the world, Absurdistan is a place worth visiting. And it’s not a film to be missed.

Rating: A+

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