April

You could easily imagine April screened in a gallery as video art: part of its brilliance is in the tension it maintains between storytelling and a hardcore commitment to the imagistic.

“April” is as exquisite as it is excruciating: a film that will linger with you long afterward, but you’ll probably never want to watch it again.

“April” is easy to admire, but Kulumbegashvili’s use of art-film conventions can be wearyingly familiar, especially when the leisurely pace turns to a crawl.

An alternately (and sometimes simultaneously) harrowing and hallucinatory story of an OB-GYN who discovers that her every attempt at nurturing life leads only to more death.

It is a disorienting, all-consuming sensorial experience and made all the much better to those willing to surrender to its mysteries.

April’s frames seek to embody a dizzying span of human experience, even if Dea Kulumbegashvili occasionally strains to corral it.

April is overall equal parts disturbing and enthralling, arresting and miserable&#59; a gorgeous slow-burn pressure cooker that culminates in a quiet condemnation of the powers complicit in women’s suffering while offering no catharsis.

April is a powerfully quiet, moving examination of control and one woman's relationship to it.

And through it all lies an impressive performance from Sukhitashvili. Between the demand of the long takes and the constant state of fight or flight uncertainty, we find ourselves mesmerized by every movement and expression.

[T]he movie [is] more confounding than revelatory.