06/11/2023 - German filmmaker Veit Helmer continues his journey through poetic, silent cinema with a highly inventive, burlesque film full of charm and benevolent love

There was once a setting of spectacular beauty, in a verdant valley amidst the stunning mountains of Georgia’s Adjara region, a valley served by a picturesque, vintage cable car linking the villages of Khulo and Tago. And there was once a German director, Veit Helmer, who was infatuated with poetic, silent cinema and who had previously turned heads in this domain with Tuvalu (nominated in the European Film Award’s Discovery category in 2000), Absurdistan [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (screened in Sundance in 2008) and The Bra [+see also:
trailer
interview: Veit Helmer
film profile] (2018). The thunderbolt-love the filmmaker felt for this landscape gave rise to Gondola [+see also:
interview: Veit Helmer
film profile], a sparkling, romantic, burlesque and highly original comedy which was screened in the European Discoveries section of the 24th Arras Film Festival.

Sometimes in life, when we cross paths with someone, a look can say a great deal. This is the case for Nino (Nini Soselia) and Iva (Mathilde Irrmann), but these two young women get plenty more opportunities to strengthen their feelings (starting out as partners in crime who love to have fun and dream, before developing a sensual attraction), because they continually cross paths with one another in their roles as cable car drivers (dressed in air-hostess-style uniforms). When one of them goes up, the other goes down, and vice versa, catching glimpses of each another en route, high up in the sky. If we take these fleeting, repeated encounters and add a backdrop of boredom (they barely have any passengers, save for a few country folk, an elderly lady, a little boy and girl, a coffin, etc.), a dictatorial, jealous boss (Zviad Papuashvili) and very few inhabitants scattered out beneath the cable car in a valley where everyone knows one another, the scene is well and truly set for a desire for something extraordinary and the gradual blossoming of a passion assisted by the hands of time and ensconced within the cable car machinery.

Incredibly rich in genius, poetic ideas, the film makes wonderful use of its limited (the two cabs, the stations at either end of the line) yet vast (the immensity of the sky and the majesty of the natural decor) space to drive a very simple story forwards using multiple  tender and comical variations of the great silent slapstick tradition. It’s a game at which the filmmaker excels, making use of all the objects around him, ensuring first-rate sound work (notably the music composed by Sóley Stefansdottir and Malcom Arison) and harnessing the highly expressive charisma of his two lead actresses. It all comes together to create a highly accomplished, light-hearted, joyful, timeless ode to freedom (to love who we want and to make the films we want to make), which will ultimately appeal to audiences of all ages.

Gondola is produced by Veit Helmer Filmproduktion (Germany) and Natura Film (Georgia), with the support of Eurimages, among others. The movie is sold worldwide by Italy’s Coccinelle Film.

(Translated from French)