The market economy is both a waking nightmare and an excuse for much shady behaviour in Bulgarian director Stephan Komanderev’s sardonic drama of societal breakdown, which world-premiered in the Crystal Globe competition at Karlovy Vary. Blaga’s Lessons portrays a Bulgaria that has lost all scruples and sense of community in its punishing transition to capitalism, in keeping with a director who has for decades made films exploring his country’s tumultuous history and struggle to find its feet.
Former literature teacher Blaga (Eli Skorcheva) is already unmoored by grief over the recent death of her husband, a policeman, when she is duped by Romanian phone scammers and their local mules out of her savings. Posing as law enforcement and insisting she’s in danger in a shock avalanche of phone calls, the practiced criminals convince her to throw her valuables off the balcony. She had earmarked part of the money to pay for a cemetery plot before the forty days are up that, according to religious belief, her spouse’s soul stays on Earth (in a dark joke, we’re initially cued to think she’s shopping for real estate for herself — not a great stretch, in a nation of condemned citizens walking.) With no collateral for a bank loan, and a recklessness at odds with her usual self, the pensioner resorts to risky measures to make quick cash and potentially turn the tables on her tormenters, in a caustic vision of contemporary Bulgaria that teeters between tragifarce and suspense thriller.
The gargantuan monument honoring the Communist-era Founders of the Bulgarian State towers over Blaga’s home city of Shumen. When she makes the laborious trek up the stairs to the cubist bulk, she appears even more tiny and inconsequential against its unyielding concrete than she usually does in the engulfing vastness of the urban landscape (lensed in dour browns and greens by Vesselin Hristov). Everywhere she turns, her fellow citizens make her feel small, and compound her humiliation. Newspaper headlines and university colleagues call her out for stupidity for falling for the elaborate scam, adding to her shame and victimisation. The relentless nature of these assaults on her dignity lend the film an air of perverse provocation, though Skorcheva’s strong screen presence and gutsy performance, along with Komanderev’s visceral outrage at entrenched inequality targeting society’s most vulnerable, are enough to engross the audience A twist ending arguably pushes both credibility and cynicism a step too far. The film’s one-note grimness may hurt its breakthrough arthouse prospects, even as its refusal to console audiences with a hopeful end is bound to strike some as a maverick act of political courage.
Although Blaga is 70, her pension is not enough to comfortably retire on. She gives private Bulgarian lessons to an Armenian refugee (Rozalia Abgarian) who fled life under bombs in Artsakh and is trying to build a stable future in the European Union, cramming for the requisite language exam for citizenship. Blaga is skeptical that Bulgaria could be a desirable destination for anyone, as she considers it mired in its own kind of war — a damning judgment the director appears to share. With her savings lost and an ageist employment climate that, despite her skills, seriously limits her prospects, she finds that a loan shark and a pawn shop cannot help her meet the shortfall, because the unscrupulous cemetery plot dealer keeps shifting the down payment goalposts. Blaga’s son, who she connects with for phone chats and who is no sweet-talker, lives in the States, too wrapped up in his own schemes to be of aid. Blaga’s shift from gullibility to wily street smarts stretches belief as she goes undercover to take jobs for the very criminal network that did a number on her. But it encapsulates the reality that crime and corruption become normalised options in a broken society with no functional welfare state or informal safety nets. Burial with respect is little more than a fantasy, in a state where it’s impossible to even live with dignity.
Director: Stephan Komanderev
Writers: Simoen Ventsislavov, Stephan Komanderev
Cast: Eli Skorcheva, Gerasim Georgiev, Rozalia Abgarian, Ivan Barnev, Stefan Denolyubov, Ivaylo Hristov
Producers: Stephan Komanderev, Katya Trichkova
Cinematography: Vesselin Hristov
Editor: Nina Altaparmakova
Music: Kalina Vasileva
Sound: Johannes Doberenz
Production companies: Argo Film (Bulgaria), 42film (Germany)
Sales: Heretic Outreach
Venue: Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (Crystal Globe competition)
In Bulgarian
114 minutes