Writer/directors Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov’s taut and at times unbearably painful tale of financial crisis in modern-day Bulgaria blends the humanist social-realism of the Dardenne brothers with a streak of borderline absurdist gallows humour – the jet black comedy of desperation.
Margita Gosheva is furiously watchable as Nadezhda, the schoolteacher who sternly lectures her pupils on the immorality of thieving while being privately driven to thuggish loan sharks and worse by her own dire straits. Let down by a wastrel husband who has squandered the security of their house (an early scene echoes the horrific opening of 99 Homes), “Nade” needs cash to stave off an imminent auction. But the company for whom she translates documents shows no signs of clearing her back pay and a crescendo of clerical errors, jobsworth deadlines and talismanic car trouble drives her to the brink of distraction.
Excellently capturing the tension between the controlling order of Nade’s personality and the spiralling chaos of her personal life, Gosheva dominates the screen, her expressive face leading us through a minefield of conflicting emotions toward battle-hardened resolve. The scene in which she is offered the chance to wipe the slate clean by apologising to her estranged father’s insufferable new girlfriend is worthy of early Mike Leigh, albeit with an even more cynical edge. A real-life news story validates the outlandish turns of the final act, but it is Gosheva who makes us believe in this neo-biblical parable of Job-like trials and godless tribulation.
