BBFF Dispatch #4: Lovable (2022) dir. Staņislavs Tokalovs / Faulty Brides (2023) dir. Ergo Kuld

The Boston Baltic Film Festival runs in-person from 3/1 through 3/3 at the Emerson Paramount Center and will continue virtually through 3/18. Click here for the schedule and ticket info, and watch the site for Joshua Polanski’s continuing coverage!

Lovable

After Matiss’s (Kārlis Arnolds Avots, who also stars in Soviet Jeans) older girlfriend, Agate (Kristīne Krūze), unexpectedly dies in a freak accident, no one is left to care for Paula (Paula Labāne), her young daughter. Matiss can’t be trusted as a business or romantic partner. He is even fucking another, younger, woman (Elīna Vaska) as Paula dies, a coincidence that leaves a bruise on his own understanding of self. Agate’s death also presents an opportunity for Matiss’s less than ethical business practices to seep into his personal life and strike it rich by manipulating the will of his deceased lover. The emotional crux of Lovable begins with the question of whether or not his reluctant and awkward relationship with Paula can challenge the dishonesty that pervades the rest of his life.

Staņislavs Tokalovs must have been one of the Baltics’ busiest film creatives over the past few years because he has three separate entries in this year’s Boston Baltic Film Festival: the own family documentary Everything Will Be Alright; an eight-part mini-series Soviet Jeans; and Lovable, a classic small-scale social drama.

I imagine Lovable is the sort of a film a certain kind of social worker would find much to appreciate in. Every interpersonal relationship tangles up in complex webs of social systems — and the navigation of these systems by Matiss, a real estate bailiff, reshapes how he looks and responds to those around him. From business deals to the state’s management of wills, the functions of life under a capitalist state define and nourish (or poison) the social lives of individuals.

Continue reading at the Boston Hassle.

Faulty Brides

A romantic comedy set in Lääne County, Estonia sometime during the beginning of the 20th century, Faulty Brides is the lightest film I saw at the 2024 Boston Baltic Film Festival. Projecting as a palatable four-quadrant and family-friendly picture, director Ergo Kuld’s latest film goes down easy and, with one major caveat, it’s quite enjoyable. The caveat: a strong, core level insensitivity to the disabled community. To enjoy this film, which I do think is possible, requires the same admission of fault and reflection as would something like the incredibly racist Rush Hour movies.

Two sisters at the Lipuvere farm — Leena (Maarja Johanna Mägi, who also features in the Melchior films) and Miina (Maria Teresa Kalmet) — find themselves being used as collateral in their father’s financial planning and he arranges for them to be married to his brother’s two sons (a couple of imbeciles from Mulgimaa, the opposite corner of the country). They each have local lovers of their own and would prefer to see those out than to marry their cousins that they have never met. Leena and Juhan (Simo Andre Kadastu), the miller’s son, glow and get giddy at the sight of one another, while Miina and Joosep (Oskar Seeman), a servant on the family farm, can’t keep their hands off each other and can’t stop making plans for the future.

Continue reading at the Boston Hassle.