04/07/2023 - Bulgarian helmer Stephan Komandarev wraps up a social trilogy about the decay of his native land with his most uncompromising and least hopeful film yet

After reflecting on the realms of Bulgarian taxi drivers and policemen with bitterness and absurdist humour in Directions [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Stephan Komandarev
film profile] and Rounds [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Stephan Komandarev
film profile], respectively, thereby delivering an all-encompassing portrait of the country, Stephan Komandarev focuses on a social group, rather than on a professional clique, in his third take on the intended theme. The main character in Blaga’s Lessons [+see also:
interview: Stephan Komandarev
film profile], which has just enjoyed its world premiere in the Crystal Globe Competition of the 57th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, is a retired teacher, and the financial troubles she gets into will not be unfamiliar to the majority of Bulgarian pensioners, although the emphatic turning point in the plot is more of a dramatic contrivance for emphasising certain issues than an element inspired by reality. In this regard, and more through personal characteristics than actions, Blaga represents a complex collective image of the last generation of people who were educated in a more tightly controlled but less mercantile society, whose values and relevance were ruthlessly swept away by capitalism in the post-socialist era; by the brutal, local version of a laissez-faire system which was uncritically embraced in a period of enthusiastic anti-communist pathos.

Authentically brought to life by veteran actress Eli Skorcheva, Blaga is a bearer of knowledge and sensibility that the present day does not appreciate, as money is its sole interest. Hence, when she tries to use all of her savings to order a dignified gravestone for her recently deceased husband, but is robbed by telephone scammers soon after, her moral foundation collapses. Outwardly cool-headed, but inwardly ravaged by the cruelty of a market-governed environment, Blaga has no choice but to act according to the fixed, jungle-like rules of financial relationships in this world that already seems incomprehensible to her. The background details of her “everyday” tragedy unveil the depopulated Bulgarian countryside with its progressively illiterate inhabitants, where the state, exhausted by never-ending sociopolitical transition, is unable to protect the most vulnerable from petty crime and aggressive behaviour. After the robbery, Blaga finds herself featured in a sensationalistic newspaper article, which piles shame upon her already miserable situation. Unlike the previous two films in the trilogy, the humour in this one is scarce, if not entirely absent.

The mere fact that it is Skorcheva who is playing Blaga adds a great deal to the role itself. After rising to domestic fame in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, she consciously abandoned her acting career after the fall of the old political system in Bulgaria in the early 1990s, owing to the new commercial demands of the industry. In this sense, her return to the screen after more than 30 years of absence is a landmark event for Bulgarian cinema, while her dedicated and absorbing performance is the foundation of the film – her stare contains both fear and determination; her seemingly involuntary gestures reveal the heroine's insecurity, but also her firmness. The unequivocal sharpness of the script, elaborated by Komandarev together with his screenwriting partner Simeon Ventsislavov, who has worked on all three titles in the trilogy, owes much of its effectiveness on screen to Skorcheva’s solid presence. Meanwhile, the dark tones in DoP Vesselin Hristov’s palette, emphasising the claustrophobic interiors and the solitary exteriors that mark the fading functionality of Bulgarian provincial life, boldly suggest a dead-end situation, in line with the denouement of the plot.

Blaga’s Lessons was produced by Bulgaria’s Argo Film and co-produced by Germany’s 42film. Its international sales are handled by Greece’s Heretic Outreach.