Youth Eternal (2025) / Mūžīgi jauni

Growing up together doesn't necessarily mean growing old together. Maybe it doesn't even mean growing up at all. There is a point in our childhood friendships when we begin to wonder “are we still friends?”. Maybe that's true for all friendships but it feels more acute in the longstanding ones where you can just grow apart without actually growing. In modern European societies, I think this often happens in the thirties where life circumstances can be so markedly different - with relationship commitments especially. So, what happens when your friends start having kids?

That's the crux of the Latvian film Youth Eternal [Mūžīgi jauni]. I often^[1] get asked where I find these films. In this case, I found it at the end of the road in Riga. I happened to be near a cinema in Central Riga and saw that this was on. Why not?

The trailer was interesting enough and so I thought it was worth a go.

The film starts off with a group of friends on a night out but with a couple missing - missing because the couple are having their first child. The first child of the group. And that group is where the story is, with the way that this child impacts the group being the thread of how life plays out. The most obvious impact is on the parents themselves - excited and tired. Part of the group but no longer really present, they have to take turns to be friends and turns to be parents. Maybe, on their own, they let some of that lingering resentment out into the group which now has to deal with the frustrations of that resentment without really understanding it. The group contains another couple, a couple where maybe the two partners are pushed by the injection of parenthood and responsibility into the bloodstream. And then there are the singletons slapped in the face by their friends settling down and making them wonder about their own biological mortality. And, it isn't just biology that is part of the issue here, it is also the careers and personalities that are interrogated by the mere presence of a baby. It makes them question their careers, their direction and even how helpful they are or should be. It really forces people to think of responsibility. Part of that conceit is shown through drug use and whether that is compatible with growing up - and if they have all grown up. And whether friendships are real or the convenience of circumstance^[2].

The film presents a series of interconnected questions which it ponders on well. Any more would be too much…

I am not sure I have seen a Latvian film, to be honest, but this was technically very competent. It looked great with inventive visuals^[3] helped along with the conceit that one protagonist was a camera operator. This enabled the film to show a music video, for example, as a way of changing the style of the film. There are scenes in urban areas (I assume Riga) amongst some holiday images in more rural, natural spaces when there is a group trip away. Both are well captured and seem to convey the sense of togetherness well. The soundscape was also to my taste with a bed of light electronica. The nature of the film meant that there isn't an obvious protagonist and could be seen as a bit of an ensemble piece with your sympathies being spread around the group at different times. That was well achieved and I like the use of a group to achieve this rather than having to lump all of the sympathy onto one character who may end up doing deeply unsympathetic things. The last film I blogged about, All My Friends Hate Me, also had this theme at this point in the life of a group of friends. Maybe there is something there in my subconscious at the moment.

I thoroughly enjoyed the film and have looked into a few of the cast and crew (in particular the director Armands Zacs, and the actor Elza Gauja and will try to find more films that they have been in.

I'm not sure where you'd be able to see it to be honest. The cinema showed it with subtitles so I guess it is ready for international distribution but it may not be the widest. Maybe it will end up on Mubi, that seems the most likely way.

Why not check out the trailer anyway below.

https://youtu.be/zroQYkoguhY?si=WbGZOIhVC6BaE80o

<sup>1. I don't, this is poetic licence. Nobody is that interested, this is just screaming into the void.↩
2. Class A, Class B, is that the only chemistry? Between us? As Suede sang in my personal highlight of their album Coming Up, “The Chemistry Between Us”.↩
3. I especially liked some of the strobing with light alternating from left to right, which is present in the trailer too.↩</sup>

Slow (2023) / Tu man nieko neprimeni

Romantic comedy is a fairly common genre but not one that I often watch, and so I was surprised that this film seemed to be pushed at me (via the Mubi algorithm) so much. In hindsight, I'm not sure it is a comedy. I'm not totally sure it is romantic either.

The first scene, setting the scene as it were, does feature love as it shows a man asking a woman to say that she loves him. She doesn't, however, love him. The context is important though, they barely know each other and are having sex and although she doesn't love him; and he doesn't really know her, she does indeed say the words. He needs it to carry on, and she needs him to carry on - an entirely dishonest yet honest transaction. The transactional nature of the woman's life is laid bare. The woman is Elena, the first protagonist of Slow, a Lithuanian film about a form of modern love.

The thing about this film that actually hit me first is the image - a low light grainy image making it feel that little bit more intimate. Whenever I read about films on 16mm, they always seem to be described as “sensual” and this goes with a slightly squarer aspect ratio than a lot of films. And, it really is a very soft, enjoyable image.

Anyway, the film continues to fill in the gaps about Elena and shows her job as a dance instructor. A group of deaf children come in and they have an accompanying adult, Dovydas, who acts as an interpreter for the instruction. It is this interpreter that is the other half of the romance and we go down the beautiful path of awkwardness as they “go somewhere” after the session. That somewhere is walking around the city (which I think is Vilnius) and chatting and this continues over time. Eventually, Elena explains that she has a lot of soup and invites Dovydas over to help her finish it. It doesn't sound like a real reason but it actually is. But Dovydas knows that this isn't the only reason, of course. In the flat, Dovydas is poking around, playfully having a look and feeling the tension rising, blurts out that he is asexual. The film is still, very much, a romance so you can guess that this does continue in that they get together but the story is really about how that happens when one partner is asexual. As you may expect, this is not a typical movie relationship but it is light without being played for laughs. And, there is that “will they, won't they?” tension throughout the film which is pretty uncommon in an actual romance lending itself to being consistently able to keep my attention.

I found Slow compelling and thoughtful, with Elena and Dovydas portrayed so pleasingly that it felt really honest and playful. It isn't a particularly long film and it felt compact and tightly made which is often a missing trait in modern films. There are some great lines throughout and one which I thought stood out from Elena was “You don't remind me of anything” and this is, in fact, the title (Tu man nieko neprimeni) in Lithuanian. I do find different names intriguing for film titles across the world but it feels like an entirely different presentation of the film with that title. And that title feels more appropriate for the film than Slow. It is unlike any other film I have seen, but this is not particularly avant garde, it is not difficult to watch and it all feels like a pleasing ride through a pair of lives intertwined for a period of time. Both seem magnetically aligned to each other from the first moment they are on screen together.

The use of “sensuous” 16mm film really works with the grainy footage feeling like a window into a relationship rather than one played for the camera. It is also a rare film that broaches covid by having face masks in the film in parts - and not too many parts. In fact, this is quite bracing, especially considering how rarely it is shown and how much we all did it.

I watched Slow on Mubi, it might still be on there. I like Mubi a lot, it has a lot of films that seem interesting but I have usually not heard of. Here's the trailer.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/UShCcaUB7vQ

I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for the director’s films from now on. As it happens, this wasn't a film that only I liked, it was also the Lithuanian entry for the foreign language award of the Oscars and Marija Kavtaradzė also won a direction award at the 2023 Sundance Festival. I think I would recommend this to most people.