In the riveting, interior 'April,' a doctor who helps women in need is targeted

In writer-director Déa Kulumbegashvili’s disquieting 2nd feature, a unusual carnal is connected the loose. We glimpse it successful the archetypal moments of “April” — this naked, human-like being whose assemblage resembles a sagging tegument bag. Possessing nary eyes, nary rima and nary face, with an astir alien lurching gait, that nightmarish fig volition reappear each truthful often, its instrumentality ever upsetting and unexplained. Remarkably, the carnal is lone somewhat much unknowable than the film’s fascinatingly opaque main character.

To telephone “April” an termination play is close and yet that statement lone hardly brushes against this movie’s blending and subversion of genres. Set successful the state of Georgia, the movie (which won a Special Jury Prize astatine the Venice Film Festival) stars Ia Sukhitashvili arsenic Nina, an adept obstetrician who, arsenic the communicative begins, witnesses a tragedy. Kulumbegashvili plunges america into a transportation country arsenic an expectant parent struggles to springiness birth, the filmmaker’s camera shielding america from thing arsenic the infirmary unit desperately effort to extract the child. Soon aft the babe is declared dead, Nina is blamed by the woman’s hubby and Nina’s unsmiling supervisor (Merab Ninidze) launches an probe into what went wrong.

But Nina’s interest extends beyond the anticipation of losing her job. It’s an unfastened concealed that Nina privately performs abortions for those successful the impoverished outlying villages. Technically, termination is ineligible for up to 12 weeks successful Georgia, but successful this conservative, patriarchal society, it’s nevertheless practically verboten. Any probe into Nina could exposure her clandestine activities and ruin her vocation — not to notation her quality to assistance much women, either to bring beingness into this satellite oregon terminate it.

Such a setup suggests the imaginable for a thriller, but Kulumbegashvili (who antecedently formed Sukhitashvili successful her 2020 diagnostic debut “Beginning”) is aft thing slipperier. And that starts with her conception of her protagonist, whose interior beingness she refuses to illuminate. Often shown on-screen successful the mediate region oregon the background, her expressions ever muted, Nina drifts done this slow-burn situation without immoderate palpable urgency oregon alarm. Emotionally, Sukhitashvili remains astatine arm’s length, her character’s actions inscrutable. One night, Nina drives into the countryside, picking up a random alien and offering him a blowjob. Has she done this before? And if so, what’s provoking it? The answers are near arsenic teasingly cryptic arsenic the shocking result of that nocturnal interaction.

By stripping distant genre conventions, “April” eschews accepted storytelling to zero successful connected acold much existential matters — namely, the oppressive gloom descending connected Nina. Filmed successful a boxy facet ratio that visually imprisons her successful her circumstances, the movie uses tracking shots arsenic hints into its character’s mindset. When the stoic Nina is off-screen during a scene, we occasionally perceive her elevated breathing, impervious of the soundless accent choking her. This superb communicative changeable weaponizes adjacent the film’s astir tranquil interludes, creating the consciousness that we’re watching these moments done her eyes. Cinematographer Arseni Khachaturan’s images of sumptuous Georgian landscapes — vibrant reddish flowers dotting an impossibly lush tract — are undercut by the anxiousness wrong the idiosyncratic soaking successful those sights.

Kulumbegashvili’s realist benignant — the writer-director filmed existent births — emphasizes antiseptic infirmary hallways and the acold procedural prime of Nina’s work. (The process of delivering a babe is depicted arsenic straightforwardly arsenic performing an abortion.) Nina’s demeanor is arsenic stark. Preferring to beryllium invisible, she goes astir her concern assisting large women portion sporadically conferring with David (Kakha Kintsurashvili), a sympathetic workfellow heading the fateful investigation. Nina and David were erstwhile lovers, a information helium has ne'er gotten over. Seated crossed from each other, David yet asks, “Why didn’t you wed me?” Tellingly, Nina is erstwhile again disconnected camera erstwhile she dilatory answers: “It would ne'er person worked out. There’s nary abstraction for anyone successful my life.”

We perceive her, but we don’t spot her. Indeed, Nina often seems conscionable retired of reach. “April” portrays her devotion to serving women successful request arsenic a noble but deadening calling, 1 that has caused her to retreat into herself, possibly arsenic a coping mechanics to unopen retired the rage and helplessness she feels. With utter naturalism, Kulumbegashvili and her prima dramatize a cruel, sexist world that’s arsenic unescapable arsenic that inexplicable carnal that repeatedly invades the story, its faceless beingness a chilling, surreal metaphor for a nine preying connected Nina and her patients.

Not rather a thriller and not rather a fearfulness movie, “April” is each the much haunting for ne'er pinning down the roots of Nina’s retreat from beingness portion dedicating herself to improving the lives of others. Near the film’s end, she’s scolded for her amerciable activities, prompting Nina to connection a terse, weary reply: “If it’s not me, it’ll beryllium idiosyncratic else.” Once again she’s not connected camera, but her dependable of conscience reverberates.