Part crime saga, part western, part laid-back observation of small-town dynamics on the Bulgarian border with Turkey, the German director's uniquely rewarding fourth feature is a hugely inventive docu-fiction with a potent dose of hybrid vigor.
Plus IconJessica Kiang
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Courtesy of Komplizen Film, Cannes Film Festival Sometimes, a movie sneaks up on you, sidling in like a lamb and striding out like a lion, revealing its brilliance only after you’ve brushed away the sand and grit of first impressions. Much more rarely — in fact, corresponding exactly to the release rate of movies by visionary German director Valeska Grisebach — the brilliance goes bone-deep, emerging from an astonishingly new and strange filmic architecture. Grisebach’s fourth feature is just such a marvel, a verité social drama, cast with non-professionals, that from the improvisational immediacy of small-scale real life, gradually gathers all the elements of a sprawling crime epic. “The Dreamed Adventure” is basically a modern Bulgarian “The Godfather,” rangily reworked as a docudrama with suntanned arms, a squinting grin and a sly way of lolling back in its plastic chair as after-dinner conversation, sloshed and salty, rolls around the patio table.
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