ZÄRTLICHKEIT (2012)

Few indie filmmakers stop me from doing what I'm suppose to do and makes me gets stuck in front of the computer. Alex Bakshaev is one of those. Earlier I reviewed is excellent feature from Naked Trip, and now I just had the honour to watch his latest production, ZÄRTLICHKEIT, a short movie shot with a cheap consumer digital camera and with natural sound taken with the camera's internal microphone. It's fifteen minutes long and it's gay drama. Not the usual stuff I review here at Ninja Dixon, but I never say no to a great movie. ZÄRTLICHKEIT is a very Fassbinder-esque drama about a German man coming to Russia to find his mother, a woman he hasn't seen for many years. But he never dares to meet her. Instead he wanders around in this unknown city, clutching her letter. He get picked up by a guy at one of the cruising areas and they talk, have sex and talk again...

That's about it, but as usual with Alex work it's a fantastic atmosphere with sensitive acting and excellent writing. The pacing is slow, but never boring (which very few people handle, right now I can only say Franco and Rollin except Bakshaev). The dialogue is stylish and simple - but tells more about life and the characters than a lot of the unnecessary words that filmmakers have a tendency to force upon us, the viewers.

It's a mature piece of work, and I could easily follow these people in a ninety minute long movie. The only complains I have is the sound in the first scene, where the quality took away my concentration from the acting and dialogue. Maybe it's possible to clean up?

ZÄRTLICHKEIT is not out yet, but if you're interested in short movies who dares to make something more in the no-budget area of filmmaking this is a movie for you. Alex Bakshaev shows us that filmmaking is easy and relaxed and that a good story can be told with the simplest means possible.