April is a harrowing and visceral experience, but one that confidently keeps its audience at a distance. Graphic and uncompromising scenes sit alongside stunningly filmed shots of nature, leaving viewers unable to look away, but with plenty of room to think.
Writer and director Dea Kulumbegashvili established herself as voice in contemporary social cinema with 2020's Beginning. April is the follow-up that cements Kulumbegashvili's reputation with a study of an individual in extremis.
Nina is an OB-GYN (Obstetrician-Gynaecologist) at a semi-rural Georgian hospital facing accusations of malpractice after a newborn's death. Resolutely detached from relationships, she finds herself increasingly under scrutiny for her personal and professional actions as the investigation proceeds. However, she's unwilling to stop helping the vulnerable members of the surrounding community with unsanctioned abortions.
As Nina, Ia Sukhitashvili crafts a painfully exquisite portrait of a woman struggling to survive. Raw, abused and alienated, she is exposed along with pretty much everything else in April. The camera's lens doesn't skimp on much, something made clear by a sudden early jump to a prolonged shot of childbirth that is likely to cause a few gasps. It's not so much that the footage is unflinching, but that the audience can't possibly look away under Kulumbegashvili and cinematographer Arseni Khachaturan's steady vision. It's a gruelling watch—you have been warned—but those who can endure the two childbirths that bookend the film will find a rewarding story in between.
The camera often locks off to create intense sequences that don't need to be visually graphic when the sound design takes over. But as Nina's life runs the range from unproductive sex to reproductive consequences, those scenes sit squarely (tellingly, in a square aspect ratio) with imposing shots of rolling thunder clouds and billowing pastel curtains. Pseudo point-of-view shots bring us near but not wholly into Nina's life. In barely furnished rooms, this creates an uncomfortable detachment. When Nina steps out from behind the camera after long scenes, there's an instant pang of voyeurism.
With those auteur decisions, Kulumbegashvili crafts a film that can't help but implicate and interrogate its audience. The small cast, led by Sukhitashvili, is hugely effective. Simple scenes sketch out Nina's reach for meaning outside of her calling, but also the forces working against her. Who is the antagonist in April? Well, after Nina's introduction frames her opposite three men, there's no mistaking the male touch on every event she experiences. More than one of the film's female characters, patients of Nina, are mute or unheard.
That said, April is a film that demands individual interpretation, a point made clear in the frequent interludes featuring a naked, grotesque and faceless figure that can be seen as Nina's loneliness and alienation personified and possibly much more. Sometimes seen in similar positions to Nina, often navigating natural environments, this distorted mound of prosthetics is a striking fusion of human frailty, age and resilience. In one vital scene, it interacts with Kakha Kintsurashvili's David, Nina's spurned lover and closest confidante. It's a tender, heart-breaking, but also hallucinatory moment. Again locked off, it's a vision of separation that demands to be seen.
By this point, the mysterious figure that has previously recalled a bather painted by Cézanne or a refiguration by Bacon, settles into Dalí's surrealism as the film bleeds into closing scenes dripping with magic realism. April encourages viewers to form their own opinions on that figure and the mortality that stalks every frame. The recurring landscapes—from red poppy fields to blue-grey pools of rainwater—leave further space for audiences to make up their minds where nature and science play their part. There's a surprise moment of dark comedy near the end that breaks a tense and irreconcilable moment of grief and validation, but it further underlines that life and death walk hand-in-hand.
Among it all, April is a striking study of a woman, and it's a cold moment when the credits roll on what's just a short, traumatic part of Nina's existence. It feels like we've experienced not the cruellest month but a lifetime.
April is in cinemas now.
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