Viktoria

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Maya Vitkova/Starring: Irmena Chichikova, Daria Vitkova, Kalina Vitkova, Mariana Krumova, Dimo Dimov and Simeon Tsolov

It seems fewer and fewer foreign films are finding distribution in the U.S. If one is unlucky enough to miss any film not-American at a local movie theater, then it means one can only hope a sought-after flick might be found on Netflix. In other words, you're screwed.

I feel fortunate I'm near a theater that plays all manner of foreign and independent films and if it weren't for the rich programming, I would never have seen such a beautiful and beguiling film like Bulgarian director Maya Vitkova's Viktoria, which recently played in the Making Waves: New Romanian Cinema 2014 series at the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, New York. The series was curated by Romanian film critic Mihai Chirilov and featured 6 films from the past year.

Based on a true story, the film is an odd salad of surreal imagery, family saga and political allegory. If that seems like too much for a 155 minute film, you might be surprised to find it isn't. Vitkova's film moves seductively; slowly drawing us into the lives of a grandmother, mother and daughter in 1980s' Communist Bulgaria.

Irmena Chichikova plays Boryana, a women who finds life under Communist rule unbearable while her mother, Dima (Mariana Krumova), a mute, supports the ruling party, which creates an adversarial relationship already strained by an unhappy history. Boryana's husband Ivan (Dimo Dimov), is a doctor who wants nothing more than to have a daughter and works earnestly toward that goal in spite of his wife, who finds the idea repugnant, which we can infer has much to do with life under Communism.

The three share a small apartment in Sofia; a cramped, too snug place for two women at odds with one another. Boryana only means of escape is her job as a librarian.

Unhappy with life in Bulgaria, the ever-somber Boryana and her husband plan to flee the country for Venice. But she becomes pregnant, in spite of her almost violent efforts to prevent it, which incurs her mother's wrath.

Boryana's desire to be free even finds expression in the most mundane things, including her Statue of Liberty cigarette lighter, which holds talismanical power for her. She also keeps a bottle of Coke in the bathroom tank; a symbolic defiance of the state and her mother.

When Boryana finally delivers, her baby is born with a physical peculiarity, for her abdomen is missing a navel, which causes a nation-wide sensation; attracting the attention of both the government and Head of State Todor Zhivkov. Another baby is born almost at the same moment but with a malformed foot and he, along with Boryana's baby, are presented to the country as something akin to miraculous gifts.

When Boryana finally arranges clandestine passage out of the country, their escape is foiled by the authorities, who have no intention of allowing the Nation's miracle baby to be a political refugee.

The film moves ahead some years as we see Boryana's daughter--Viktoria--has grown into an enfant terrible. Pampered ludicrously by the State, Viktoria's behavior shows alarming signs of being out of control. Such behavior includes showing up at a theater-filled music recital for the nation's talented youth, shoving aside a peer then banging on the keys discordantly while an attendant Zhivkov leads an accommodating audience in raptuorous applause. During her lavish, State-sponsored birthday party, we see Zhivkov and government officials chase a bratty Viktoria around the grounds as she gambols merrily, thereby making a mockery of the buffoonish Party officials. Vitkova captures the sequence in aerial slo-mo, which accentuates the absurdity of the situation.

Viktoria even has a phone in her room with a direct connection to Zhivkov, who she doesn't hesitate to contact at ridiculous hours to issue demands. Meanwhile, Viktoria is openly contemptuous of her parents and makes a ritual of treating the nation's other beloved child, Stefcho (Simeon Tsolov) with violent disdain whenever he appears. Her fascination with her navel-less abdomen compels her to force classmates to bear the indignity of showing their bellybuttons while standing in a line as school administrators look on helplessly.

As Viktoria's id runs amok, Boryana spends her days brooding, bearing an in-home estrangement from her daughter and alienation from her mother.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, Viktoria receives a call from Zhivkov on her bedroom phone informing her that "it is all over," whose ambiguity carries not only a political message but a personal one, as the government's fairy-tale romance with her begins its decline.

In reaching her teens, Viktoria becomes a go-between for her mother and grandmother, who refuse to be in the same room. When her grandmother insists she bring government-rationed milk to Boryana, Viktoria stops en route to puncture the package and empty its contents on the ground. Milk is a major motif in the film. Its feminine/maternal, elemental quality links all three women in a fascinating, symbolic way.
Another motif is the umbilical cord. The image looms large, as one might imagine, in Viktoria's life. In one scene, she dreams a phone cord serves as an umbilical connection and later, when her phone rings, she cuts the cord with scissors--adding emphasis to the intriguing symbol.

As democracy takes hold, Boryana gives up her dream of living abroad though she fails to reconcile with her mother. The film ends with a devastating event which affects the women's lives. In the larger, political realm, Zhivkov is placed on trial and arrested for misappropriating State funds. His sentence serves as kind of coda for Bulgaria's Communist past.

One can find so many fascinating and poetic images in the film. I really liked the numerous, aerial long shots and the eccentrically framed compositions. I also liked the milk imagery. Two shots that come to mind are of a breast spraying its milk in slow motion toward the screen and later, Boryana is deluged by a milky rainfall as she stands in the middle of a field. It drips from her coat just as her amniotic fluid does earlier in the film when her water breaks.

Vitkova is a visual poet; her use of color is particularly striking. The reds of Communist Bulgaria and the blues of the Democratic party share space as the film's two dominant colors.

Political allegory is also rampant. Boryana's mother represents the country's monolithic, Communist past while Boryana is its democratic future. It isn't coincidental that mother and daughter would clash just as Boryana does with a daughter who is a darling of the regime.

The film's delights are many but the qualities that recommend it most are its visuals and its surreal story. The film ends ironically and in an unexpected way, which in retrospect seems almost inevitable.

Viktoria makes my list of favorites for 2014. The fact that it only played one night at the local cinema and the fact that I might have missed it makes me shudder. It is gratifying to see a director's first feature show so much aesthetic maturity and vision. I hope Maya Vitkova becomes a household name in years to come. There is certainly nothing household about her perspective.