Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry is a great showcase for Eka Chavleishvili, moving from supporting roles into taking a leading role. Here, she plays Etero, someone in her forties showing her vulnerability as the village old maid with a secret. She takes a shower after perhaps the wildest day in her life – after brushing with death, the shopkeep loses her virginity to her product distributor (Temiko Chichinadze). Her friends (including (Piqria Niqabadze), have only half of an idea of what she does outside work. Their hangouts have them criticising her only for her to clap back, but sometimes she tells them her funny stories. Things go south, though, as a health scare gives her determination to say goodbye to everyone, including those women.

Chavleishvili has an interesting face and physicality – her fuller face as a canvas with those dark yet eyebrows. Through these features, she conveys Etero’s curiosity when she’s alone as well as her bemusement whenever she’s with other people. The scenes when she’s alone, though, are most fascinating, as she explores a body in ways we all do alone. Much of cinematic language involves the male gaze regardless of whether that gaze comes from the viewer or the director. Yes, I’m aware that a woman, Elene Naveriani, co-wrote and directed, and yes, it’s subversive enough because the gaze’s subject is ‘different’. Either way, Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry shows that a person alone can make for a captivating cinematic experience.

Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry is also unique within Georgian cinema this decade even within that cinema’s exploration of progressive themes. There’s a youthful worldliness and subversion within Levan Akin’s films and an impressionistic journalistic detachment in Salome Jashi’s documentaries. Pardon the reductive comparisons, but Naveriani uses Tolstoyan stream of consciousness and  Kaurismaki’s stiltedness that it mixes with naturalism. We see this in a scene when Etero crashes her friends’ card game as a way to make amends. It plays out like what may be an episode of The Real Housewives Outside Tbilisi without the music. The bold colours in the art direction and cinematography also works within a film that feels like a subtle dream.

Films about affairs often have its healthy share of scenes when the lovers have their clandestine rendezvous and risque moments. It feels like there’s less of that in this film. Instead, it feels like 80 percent of the film has Etero alone or with two sets of female friends and relatives. It’s also interesting how these women accept her at face value, believing she’s a sick virgin when she’s not. The film performs a great sleight of hand as it presents a groupthink that doesn’t overtly suspend viewers’ disbelief. Women may not like each other all the time, but they have each other’s back and mostly mind their business.

Watch Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry on MUBI.