To open: Ada (Milana Aguzarova), a young woman living in North Ossetia, is planted against the cement wall by the freeway. As the tumult of cars rushes by, a young man — the seemingly lovesick Tamik (Arsen Khetagurov) — calls for her. She covers her face with her zipped-up jacket, only exposing her vacillating eyes; they express so much it’s as though she’s created a never-before-seen emotion. Her eyes and face offer the most stirring mix of facial movements this side of Giulietta Masina. Each character’s actions contain both love and oppression, lust and apathy, loneliness and family.
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The bold coming-of-age tale “Unclenching the Fists” is Russian director Kira Kovalenko’s second feature film, and it represents the rising of an unflinching, assured new voice.
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Ada is a prisoner in her own home. Her possessive father (Alik Karaev) forbids her from wearing perfume, expects her home immediately when she’s off work, and keeps her locked in their ramshackle apartment. Her brother Dakko (Khetag Bibilov) is unnaturally close to her; he demands to lie in bed with Ada, pines for her attention, is supremely jealous when she shows an interest in anyone else. Ada loves Dakko. But as a sibling.
“Unclenching the Fists” operates on the suspicion of incest. While it never occurs physically, the film is rife with characters demonstrating an unhealthy obsession with each other. Even Ada sighs for her imposing, stoic brother Akim (Soslan Khugaev), the man she waits for by the freeway. The oldest, Akim has been away, estranged from their controlling father. He returns to whisk Ada away but cannot totally divorce himself from the toxic masculinity that causes him to often side with other men over his sister. It wouldn’t be totally accurate to say that Ada is sexually attracted to Akim — he represents freedom, and Ada lusts for that independence.
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Editor Mukharam Kabulova moves “Unclenching the Fists” at a measured pace, and as a result, the film is often too opaque in its oscillations between broad desire and sexual hunger. Kovalenko often hinders her film with undercooked twists: a scene involving a pamper arises from nowhere, and a local tragedy — one that partly explains the father’s motivations, imbuing him with a modicum of empathy — feels tacked on. The stratifications of emotions do not join on a unified level until an impassioned school dance, wherein Ada begs Akim to whisk her away only to revolt when he forcibly removes her. The scene works because dance is one of the few arts that can express a multitude of emotions in a single movement.
Aguzarova gives an incredible performance that displays just as much depth. In a span of a few seconds, she can be flirtatious, skittish, heartbroken, and defiant. That range is often shown in her interactions with Tamik, the boy who appears to love her, and her stubborn father. In the final scene, as Ada and Akim ride down a country road — her arms wrapped around him — the camera flutters and glitches as though they’re being filmed by an interested onlooker. Here Kovalenko shows she has the chops to balance the off-putting with rich narratives of pathos; you could totally see her taking the leap that Kantemir Balagov took with “Beanpole.” “Unclenching the Fists” isn’t perfect. Rather it’s a daring and complex leap by Kovalenko. [B]
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