NYFF Review: Valeska Greisbach’s THE DREAMED ADVENTURE

An often-employed descriptor of Yasujiro Ozu’s cinema among European and American audiences was always that both the style, substance, and mannerisms of its character dynamics were too esoteric, the conversations too rooted in a Japanese viewpoint. These were not just criticisms but were used to limit the scope of comfort of being able to make affirmative observations about his movies. Film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum suggested however that the cultural biases of the Western viewer are just as necessary part of criticism as deference of esotericism. I would suggest the same for a movie like Valeska Grisebach’s The Dreamed Adventure, a movie that embroils much of its conversation in the Bulgarian/Turkish border politics and smuggling, the history of the Polish diaspora and sex-trafficking within Bulgaria, and the racial dynamics between Slavic and Turkic communities.

A Dangerous Past

The first character we extensively see in the film is the mysterious and laconic Said (Syuleman Letifov), a longtime smuggler who is juggling jobs between two criminal enterprises. His current task is to bring over trucks of oil from Turkey for Velko (Nikolai Shekerdjiev). Velko’s rival and Said’s former partner Ilia (Stoicho Kostadinov) gets wind of this and starts moving to intimidate Said. He does this through the film’s other main character and eventually the most important one who ties its various threads together, Veska (Yana Radeva). Veska is an archeologist who also once was involved with both Said and Ilia. She starts to sense herself being drawn back into a dark world that Grisebach reveals in a tense and harrowing slow-burn. We get pieces of information about Ilia’s dealings and the dark history these characters once inhabited that seems to be swirling back around in a storm again.

A Woman in Trouble

Grisebach lines the various threads of the narrative through Veska. She is wise, suspicious, but very self-assured. There is a history within her that is aching to be let out and her combative conversations with Ilia hint towards it piece by piece. Throughout the film, Grisebach takes us down the same roads, the same houses, the same neighborhoods over and over again and towards the end we feel like we know what to expect in each local, we can sense the danger or comfort based on who and what we’re dealing with. Her pacing is masterful in its clear-eyed, cold and hardened relationships of its characters, where no love is lost and everyone speaks in plain turns. This could prove to be frustrating for viewers used to cathartic outburst of rage, but this movie deals with mysterious pasts, ghosts and secrets long laid to rest but dug up again.

The Dreamed Adventure makes gender dynamics palpably uncomfortable throughout. Every sequence where Veska is surrounded by men we feel like something nefarious is bubbling. Grisebach is so good at putting us in the uneasy positions and making us squirm without compromising Veska’s veteran integrity. She’s been here before, she knows the men who populate this film like the back of her hand. So while we feel fear for her, she surprisingly reassures us. But this veneer begins to crack when one of Veska’s neighbor’s young daughter starts getting involved with a boy in Ilia’s gang.

Conclusion

It’s easy to say that The Dreamed Adventure is too involved and specific in the dynamics of Bulgarian society for the audience to grasp but then why would Grisebach knowingly present it at the New York Film Festival? Surely, she couldn’t think we all brushed up on our history of post-Communist Bulgaria before the screenings. After all, Americans by and large probably couldn’t point out Bulgaria on a map (As a proud geography nerd since childhood, I can). Instead, perhaps we should give Greisbach the benefit that in the movie itself, in its patient and unassuming telling of a violent history of its characters, tells or at least infers to us everything that we should know.