TIFF 2013 Review: Celestial Wives of the Meadow Mari (2013)

Cast: Yuliya Aug, Yana Esipovich, Vasiliy Domrachyov
Director: Aleksey Fedorchenko
Country: Russia
Genre: Drama

Editor’s Notes: The following review is part of our coverage of the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival. For more information on the festival visit http://tiff.net and follow TIFF on Twitter at @TIFF_NET.

On the surface, restriction sounds like a negative, a way to hold oneself back or to be held back, a way to never reach your full potential. In another, though, restriction can be liberating. There’s a freedom to be found in the narrowest of confines, and through tweaking and shifting within a cage, an entirely new point of view can be achieved. It is impossible to talk about director Alexey Fedorchenko’s new film Celestial Wives of the Meadow Mari and not think of Stephin Merritt, frontman for The Magnetic Fields. Over his career with that band, Merritt has put himself in boxes over and over again, and found within them whole worlds worth exploring. He throws himself into the wardrobe and makes his own Narnia within its walls. Fedorchenko seemingly combines two of Merritt’s gimmick’s here, lifting 69 Love Songs’ commitment to a single theme and I’s alphabetic obsession: the film presents 23 vignettes centered on women whose names start with the letter “O.”

These vignettes range in length from around 30 seconds to nearly 10 minutes, and they are tonally often dissimilar. Some of them are pitched as comedy, some as tragedy, some as tender moments and some as surreal discursions into myth and legend.

These vignettes range in length from around 30 seconds to nearly 10 minutes, and they are tonally often dissimilar. Some of them are pitched as comedy, some as tragedy, some as tender moments and some as surreal discursions into myth and legend. The film focuses on women of all ages and persuasions, but by also so often returning to strange local customs and bizarre myths, the director evinces a fascination with the feminine as both fact and unsolvable mystery. There are beasts in the forest who want to have sex with one woman’s husband, and feigned beasts who have sex with another. There are odd customs from a horn the women blow when they get their first period, to a game involving a hoof and some subtext perhaps best left out of polite conversation.

A sense of directorial detachment often colors these stories, as if Fedorchenko wants to simply document truths without commenting on them himself. His presence does insert itself rarely, and though one of those moments accompanies the film’s worst, most puerile gag, I still found myself smiling for the way he suddenly engaged with material he seemed likely to leave alone. There’s a fairly consistent style to the vignettes even as they range in tone and subject matter widely. This is not an exercise in style so much as a meditation on a theme, on a condition, on a state of being.

Many of the stories don’t have an arc, a rhyme, or even a reason. Things happen until we move along to the next woman, and if we learn anything, that’s on us. Fedorchenko’s studied objectivity is transferred to the viewer, who engages less emotionally than intellectually with each story. When there is an emotional attachment, it is often a powerful one, but it seems almost beside the point of the exercise.

Some of it works and some of it doesn’t, but it all contributes to a greater whole in a way that forces you to respect Fedorchenko even when he’s failing brazenly…

And that’s what Celestial Wives of the Meadow Mari is, ultimately: an exercise, a stunt, an experiment. Some of it works and some of it doesn’t, but it all contributes to a greater whole in a way that forces you to respect Fedorchenko even when he’s failing brazenly (because he never lacks ambition). Like Merritt before him, he wins over his audience by trying and trying and trying—he strikes enough chords that a few of them almost have to be winners. The vignettes here are of variable quality because in some sense they would have to be. Some of them are fully formed stories, others are vague sketches, ideas or images that either resonate or don’t. Mileage will vary for any individual viewer, because this is a film meant to be contended with on a personal level. Its surreal sequences worked best for me, both because of their allegorical potency and because of Fedorchenko’s matter-of-fact approach to some very strange ideas and occurrences. To watch Celestial Wives of the Meadow Mari is to see a man bind himself in a straight jacket and struggle to break free. Whether he will burst from his restraints is an open question, yet its watching him try that’s worth the price of admission.

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Jordan Ferguson

Staff Film Critic

Jordan Ferguson is a lifelong pop culture fan, and would probably never leave his couch if he could get away with it. When he isn’t wasting time “studying the law” at the University of Michigan, he writes about film, television, and music. In addition to writing for Next Projection, he is the Editor-in-Chief of Review To Be Named, a homemade haven for pop-culture obsessives. Check out more of his work at Reviewtobenamed.com , follow him on twitter @bobchanning, or just yell really loudly on the street. Don’t worry, he’ll hear.

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