Women Do Cry, 2021.
Directed by Vesela Kazakova and Mina Mileva.
Starring Maria Bakalova, Vesela Kazakova, Iossif Surchadzhiev, Diana Spasova, Bilyana Kazakova, Dobriela Popova, Rositca Gevrenova, Ralitsa Stoyanova, and Katia Kazakova.
SYNOPSIS:
A promising musician, Sonja, learns that she’s contracted HIV. After she drops out of the music conservatory, Sonja is helped out by her practical sister Lora, who supports the family by working as a crane operator, and their hapless mother Ana.
Directors Mina Mileva and Vesela Kazakova certainly have their hearts in the right place with their new feature Women Do Cry, which is at its strongest as a straight-forward examination of a woman coming to terms with an HIV diagnosis, but becomes increasingly messy and tiresome as more scattered subplots enter its orbit.
Musician Sonja (Maria Bakalova) learns that she’s contracted HIV from her adulterous, married lover, a fact she confides in her headstrong crane operator sister Lora (Ralitsa Stoyanova). As Lora pushes her to seek medical treatment, Sonja learns first-hand the pervasive prejudices that still exist in Bulgarian society, where she’s blamed for her condition, slut-shamed, or otherwise viewed with disgust.
Sonja’s story ultimately provides a launchpad to examine the daily struggles of the entire family of women; her mother and especially her aunts, with Veronica (Bilyana Kazakova) struggling to raise a baby as a single mother, and Yoana (co-director Kazakova), a trans man, bristling up against Bulgaria’s societal division over gender recognition.
It’s a hell of a lot for any film to tackle, to consider misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia within a single, sprawling character piece, and it’s tough to shake the feeling that the filmmakers have rather bitten off more than they can chew. In no subtle terms they effectively convey the long shadow cast by the Bulgarian patriarchy, of the physical and emotional violence inflicted on women by men, and how society bends itself to men’s desires and needs above all else, even turning women against each other in the process.
Yet the film feels at its most perceptive and informative when considering Sonja’s experience, which given that the majority of cinema’s HIV sufferers have been gay men, is certainly unique. Sonja meets judgment and misinformation at every turn; even her own sister views anal sex as a strictly “gay” activity, and the nation’s propaganda machine perpetuates homophobic myths about HIV-infected people to the wider population in an attempt to “protect the Bulgarian family,” whatever that means.
Despite the expectation that she might be treated with greater respect in the medical field, her first doctor wants nothing to do with her once learning of her condition. And so, in a country where even her access to healthcare is limited by incorrect assumptions, it’s little surprise that Sonja turns to kooky religious rituals in the hope of cleaning herself of the virus.
Yet Mileva and Kazakova unfortunately defer to over-the-top melodrama far too often, such that painfully realistic exchanges like Sonja’s with the doctor are actually few and far between. The filmmakers paint instead in broad, sometimes unintentionally comical strokes, such as when a cartoonish bigot flips the bird at Yoana and shouts “Genders, boo! Genders!” In another scene Veronica pulls a knife on her screaming baby and threatens to jump from her apartment’s balcony, which while not entirely unbelievable helps tip the balance into overwrought soap opera fare.
It doesn’t help that the various familial plots are framed by the heavy-handed recurring visage of a stork and its young; the film opens with a wounded mother stork getting sewn up after being shot, ostensibly by a man, serving as a lunkheaded metaphor for Bulgaria’s particular brand of misogyny. It feels a bit first-year film school, bamboozling the viewer with a bull-in-a-china-shop level of subtlety.
The ensemble cast – several of them real-life siblings of Kazakova – are at least mostly convincing as a tight-knit group of women, though there are moments where the histrionics begin to feel a little phoney. Oscar nominee Maria Bakalova, certainly a talented actress, finds herself struggling to contend with the script’s more outlandish asks. Once Sonja starts writhing around and screaming about Satan attempting to take control of her, before taking her laptop for a shower and smashing it to pieces, you might be left struggling to stifle a laugh.
Such is the price paid for the filmmakers’ indulgence in on-the-nose dramatics that become increasingly difficult to take seriously. There are a lot of valid points made in this movie about ongoing hate crimes both in Bulgaria and the world at large – none of which are solved by film’s end, naturally – but a smaller, less-ambitious collage of stories may ultimately have served Sonja better.
Women Do Cry is a well-intended probe into the prejudices facing modern Bulgarian society, yet unseated by its clumsy, excessively melodramatic treatment.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Shaun Munro – Follow me on Twitter for more film rambling.
