Critic Reviews

Despite the seeming inevitability of tragedy and despair, In Bloom remains true to its title. Though political and personal upheaval threatens to overwhelm them, Eka and Natia’s clarity and courage resist the ignorance, injustice, and rage all around.

Keenly observed, geographically specific portraits of adolescence are always welcome, but there’s definitely something to be said for charging the genre’s usual tender lyricism with an ever-present threat of life-altering violence.

This is a film for which the landscape, both social and material, is paramount.

More directly, In Bloom follows on 2012's "The Machine Which Makes Everything Disappear," a documentary by Tinatin Gurchiani that offered bleak vignettes about the lives of young Georgians.

You can feel how personal a film In Bloom is and how promising a first feature this is for one of the country's new wave artists.

In Bloom, whose title proves more and more ironic as the film goes on, is a fascinating snapshot of a country at war with itself (literally, eventually) as seen through the eyes of two teenage girls, whose lives are complicated enough as it is.

As arthouse coming-of-age films go, this is brilliant – smart and sensitive with a screw-you feminist streak. And it’s beautifully acted by two first-time actresses playing Eka and Natia, who have been friends forever.

Featuring two outstanding lead performances from bright young talents Lika Babluani and Mariam Bokeria, Ekvtimishvili and Groß immerse their audience in the detritus of a country in tatters, whilst at the same time delicately nurturing two intertwining female maturation tales - with all that entails.

The film finds the subtle tells that suggest these free-roaming girls might themselves have become prisoners of war, while enveloping its heroines in a persuasive turbulence: unpredictable, never forced, and forever compelling.

The foreclosure of possibilities provided by the use of the long take assists in the indictment of chauvinism and patriarchal brutality that underpin, directly and indirectly, many moments in the film.