GUIDES ABOUND ON ENDLESSVOYAGE TO ARMENIA
Chris Knight, The National Post
Ottawa Citizen
rts/story.html?id=ff70f66b-d4cb-4dd1-8f8e-66160180 2a9d
Aug 31 2007
Canada
Le Voyage en Armenie *(* 1/2 Starring: Ariane Ascaride, Gerard Meylan
****Directed by: Robert Guediguian (In French and Armenian with English
subtitles) Rating: 14+ Playing at: ByTowne Cinema through to Sunday
– – –
French-born director Robert Guediguian returns to his Armenian
roots by making his first film in the former Soviet republic, still
undergoing an uneasy and painful transition to a post-communist
economy. Guediguian regular Ariane Ascaride plays Anna, a cardiologist
from Marseilles who tells her father that he is dying and needs
surgery.
Miffed and/or scared, the old man decamps for his native land, even
though he hasn’t set foot there since the 1950s. Anna, on the advice
of her husband as well as her dad’s backgammon-playing chums at the
Armenian cultural centre, sets out to find him.
After a rare non-mocking use of the plane-flying-over-a-map effect
(useful if, like me, you have only a vague notion of where to find
Armenia, nestled among Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Iran), Anna
finds herself in the country of her father and forefathers.
A friendly old man pops up from behind the plants in her hotel lobby
and offers to be her chauffeur. Another gives her a helicopter tour
of the countryside, pointing out that this is where God dropped all
the rocks He scooped out of France when He was making the world.
(Armenia, as the film also teaches, was the first officially Christian
nation, in AD 301, so visitors hear a lot of similar metaphors and
are invited to visit the many fine churches.)
Through meetings with an endless succession of patriots and viewing
endless images of Mount Ararat (a Turkish peak, but claimed hopefully
by Armenia), Anna starts to absorb the language, gets a haircut and
manicure in the local style and, wouldn’t you know, starts to feel
more Armenian by the minute. She’s helped along by her various guides
who keep asking, "C’mon, don’t you feel just a little Armenian? Here,
let me show you another church …"
The patriotism is stirring and the landscapes starkly beautiful, but
one can only hear heart-pounding speeches that begin "this is my home"
so many times before the repetition starts to dull.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress