This emotionally rich situation is played for all its worth by the entire cast, but the standout is Gorintin.
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08/19/04
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Since Otar Left (2004)
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Reviews Counted:20
Fresh:20
Rotten:0
Average Rating:8.1/10
Consensus: A drama that's both funny and moving.
Theatrical Release:Apr 9, 2004 Limited
Box Office: $220,305
Synopsis: The crumbling squalor of former USSR city Tibilisi, Georgia, is the setting for a tale of three generations of Soviet women. Elder matriarch Eka (Esther Gorintin) lives for the letters from her... [More]
Starring: Esther Gorintin, Dinara Droukarova, Nino Khomassouridze, Temour Kalandadze
Director: Julie Bertuccelli
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Reviews for Since Otar Left
Top CriticIt is a film that understands women, but more importantly, understands life.
08/06/04
Top CriticOtar and Lenin make terrific bookends on the post-communist experience for average citizens.
08/06/04
Top CriticWhatever film acting is about -- technique, presence or truth-telling -- [Esther Gorintin] got it.
08/06/04
Top CriticSince Otar Left tells a story of conventional melodrama, and makes it extraordinary because of the acting.
06/25/04
Top CriticA film, in which fictional characters become human by talking as real people really talk.
06/24/04
Top CriticA moving family drama.
06/11/04
Top CriticA story full of gentle grace notes and keen-eyed observation, writer-director Julie Bertuccelli's first feature is at turns funny, sweet, sad, trenchant and telling.
06/03/04
Top CriticWonderful family drama.
05/28/04
Top CriticClick to read the article
05/26/04
Top CriticSince Otar Left could have played to broad comedy. Or it could have played to tearjerker sentimentality.
05/21/04
Top CriticA small film of surpassing beauty and sadness.
05/14/04
Top CriticIt's a wonderful film with a love of intimacy, an eye for potent small moments that can go by unobserved and a willingness to explore the emotional complications of family relationships.
05/13/04
Top CriticThe mulish and loving maternal sway of Eta is felt in every one of the film's lovingly articulated frames, thanks to the magnificently expressive performance of the 90-year-old Gorintin.
04/30/04
Top CriticAll three actresses are wonderful, but the picture belongs to the commanding Gorintin.
04/30/04
Top CriticMs. Bertuccelli's direction is singularly graceful in allotting enough space to each of her three co-protagonists without tearing apart the fabric of familial solidarity.
04/29/04
Top CriticDrawing on her documentary training, the director distills complex meaning into such perfectly chosen gestures as a foot rubbed, a cigarette smoked, a shampoo interrupted when (with post-Soviet-era regularity) the water fails.
04/28/04
Top CriticJulie Bertuccelli's very beautiful first feature is suffused with indelible humanist values and emotions.
04/27/04
Top CriticIf Otar is, finally, a mite thin and predictably structured, that takes little away from the filmmaker and her cast, who work hard at fashioning the most outlandish special effect of all: believable human life.
04/27/04
Top CriticSince Otar Left sustains a perfect balance of pathos, humor and a clear-headed realism.
11/04/03
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