BBFF Dispatch #2: Two Baltic Movies Prominently Featuring Lakes

The Boston Baltic Film Festival runs from Friday, 2/28 through Sunday, 3/2 at the Emerson Paramount Center, and through 3/17 virtually. Click here for the schedule and ticket info, and watch the site for Joshua Polanski’s continuing coverage!

The following dispatch features reviews of Drowning Dry & 8 Views of Lake Biwa.

8 Views of Lake Biwa is the weirdest movie showing at this year’s Boston Baltic Film Festival. Estonia’s submission for the 97th Oscars, 8 Views of Lake Biwa has nothing to do with Lake Biwa, a large lake in Japan, but Lake Peipsi, the massive body of water separating Estonia and Russia. Years ago, a boating accident on the titular lake took the lives of several teenagers. Only Hanake, played by Elina Masing, who plays Mariann in Lioness (also showing through the BBFF), and one of the adults survive the accident. Like a rock skipping across the water, this creates a ripple effect throughout the community. The social bonds of the small fishing town become manipulated and perverted in the face of a shared tragedy.

An isolated remnant of an Orthodox Russian community who fled 17th-century homeland oppression presides over the lake and makes due as a fishing community. Modern geopolitics intrude upon the fairytale luster, such as with the mandated military service of a young man; for the most part, the village carries on with a lifestyle that could be lifted from either the 17th or 21st centuries. Much like Atom Egoyan’s quintessentially Canadian The Sweet Hereafter, the shared tragedy fractures the social bonds of the community. Also like Egoyan’s film, the central tragedy concerns the unexpected death of several teenagers after an accident involving the town’s central body of water.

Continue reading at the Boston Hassle.

There are a few types of scenes that, even if nothing is semiotically tragic about them, their presence looms large and indicates the ultimately tragic teleological end the film is heading for. The opening MMA scene with a bloodied Lukas (Giedrius Kiela) triumphing in the ring certainly gives us no hope that Drowning Dry, a film with an even more hopeless title, will not end unfortunately for the two families vacationing together. Has any MMA film evaded tragedy?

Even though her husband wins the fight, we meet Ernesta (Gelminė Glemžaitė) with tears running down her face: watching your husband out-clobber another man isn’t exactly the same as cheering for a basketball-playing spouse. The hyper-masculine combat sport walks much closer to the edge of insanity and belligerence than basketball or soccer ever could. She worries something terrible will befall Lukas and her family. And something terrible inevitably does happen on their lake house vacation with Ernesta’s sister Juste (Agnė Kaktaitė) and her slobbish horndog husband Tomas (Paulius Markevičius). Both couples have a kid, and one of those kids almost drowns, or does drown, in the lake. The tragedy isn’t simply the agonizing event that catalyzes it, but also the butterfly effect that follows.

Continue reading at the Boston Hassle.

The review of 8 Views of Lake Biwa is adapted and modified from this writer’s previous coverage of the same film at In Review Online.