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/UShCcaUB7vQI'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.
