May 23, 2008 2:12 pm
By: tiffreviews
Screen Daily - Shy courtship, stark landscapes and a spirited supporting cast of livestock make Tulpan a vivid, intensely enjoyable debut feature from former documentarian Sergei Dvortsevoi. The Kazakhstan-set film hardly breaks new ground, in both setting and mood pitching its tent very close to The Story Of The Weeping Camel. But it similarly blends intimate, gentle fiction with a strong dose of ethnographic observation, to immensely charming effect. Received rapturously at its screening in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard strand, the film will be an audience-pleaser at festival s and, though not specifically targeted at children, should play well at events with a kids’ angle. Theatrical exposure is likely to be modest, but robust ancillary life seems likely.
The setting is a windblown, dusty plain - Betpak Dala, or ‘Hunger Steppe’ - in southern Kazakhstan, where young Russian-speaking sailor Asa (Kuchinchirekov) has travelled from Sakhalin to join his sister Samal (Yeslyamova) and her family. Samal’s husband Ondas (Besikbasov) is a herdsman tending a large flock of sheep. Asa’s dream - which he has illustrated, as per tradition, on his sailor’s collar - is to have his own herd one day. But to do that he needs to find a bride. The film starts with his nervous courtship of the coy Tulpan, daughter of a neighbouring couple, whom Asa tries to impress with his tales of the sea. But the couple are apparently deterred by Asa’s wildly embellished description of encounters with marine life, while the bashful Tulpan, who stays stubbornly out of sight throughout the film, is turned off by the size of Asa’s ears. The courtship scenes are a hoot, with photographic evidence produced to show that Asa’s ears are smaller than those of England’s Prince Charles… [Full Story]
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