Since Otar Left

By PETER CALDER

(Herald rating: * * * * )

Not a lot happens in this, the feature debut of a French documentary film-maker respected at home but unseen abroad, and much of what does happen is deliberately constructed rather than real.

But, working from her own deftly worked script and with the assistance of the three generations of women who play the central characters, Bertuccelli has made a deceptively slight and deeply affecting film that explores the power of fantasy and the complicated mix of self-deception and duty we owe to those we love.

The Otar of the title never appears in the film. He's a medical student from the former Soviet republic of Georgia, living in Paris as an illegal immigrant doing odd jobs on building sites.

Struggling along back home in Tbilisi, where times are tough and the power and water fail without warning, are his mother Eka (Gorintin), his sister Marina (Khomassouridze) and Marina's daughter, Ada (Droukarova).

Nonagenarian Eka Gorintin, the film's fulcrum, is a revelation. She lives a life rich in self-deception and hankers for the old days. "Stalin would have sorted this mess out," she says, when the power goes off.

She is sustained by the belief, cultivated in occasional phone calls from the absent Otar, that he is enjoying stellar career success in his adopted city.

Bertuccelli sketches these women's lives with admirable economy at an easy loping pace: Eka is domineering but slightly helpless, Marina is bitter, and Ada still has some of the idealism of youth. The complexity of their relationships is neatly highlighted by the choice of languages - French, Russian and Georgian - in which they speak to each other.

Once eased into their lives, we share the shock when Otar is killed in an accident.

What happens next - the two younger women conspire to conceal the death from the older one and she decides to head to Paris to see her boy - is the business of a charming and delightful film.

Small, character-driven European films like this don't often have more than a couple of outings in film festivals. This one, which manages the considerable feat of being both unsentimental and touching, is a welcome return.

CAST: Esther Gorintin, Nino Khomassouridze, Dinara Droukarova

DIRECTOR: Julie Bertuccelli

RUNNING TIME: 100 mins

RATING: M (low level offensive language)

SCREENING: Academy, previews this weekend, opens Thursday