Tulpan

By Matt Prigge
Add Comment Add Comment | Comments: 0 | Posted May. 19, 2009

Directed by Sergei Dvortsevoy
B+

Turns out Borat’s not the only funny Kazakh. Given that it’s another unholy blend of doc footage and artificial storytelling, Tulpan looks for all the world like a second go of the overrated The Story of the Weeping Camel. But there’s one secret ingredient longtime documentarian Sergei Dvortsevoy has added: humor. That seems to have done the trick, as this Cannes favorite is, rather than a National Geographic snore, an irresistible mix of ethnography porn and deadpan silliness often worthy of its obvious inspiration, Werner Herzog.

Set in the dispiriting open spaces of Southern Kazakhstan, Tulpan considers young, hapless Asa (Askhat Kuchencherekov). Newly returned from the Russian navy, Asa wishes—quite insanely—to settle down in this desolate nowhere, dreaming of his very own ranch-style house built on the steppes and pimped out with satellite TV.

He settles in with his sister’s chaotic family, and tries to wed the local hottie. The problem is his ears. They’re funky-looking, and his fumbling, ill-considered attempts to impress her family with graphic tales of an octopus tussle do no better to put his dream in motion.

This sounds like one of those “wacky” “foreign” comedies that Miramax used to sell to rural art-house theaters patronized by people who would never otherwise watch foreign films. Relax. Story isn’t exactly Tulpan’s m.o., and Dvortsevoy establishes a detached and bemused tone, which proves just as effective at capturing the paradoxical claustrophobia of its open, barren setting as it does the chaos of Asa’s sister’s home.

Indeed, sometimes it seems Dvortsevoy has made the first yurt screwball. Scenes of Asa at his temporary home are peppered with the shrill singing of the young daughter, among other amusing irritations.

Elsewhere Tulpan offers real-life Herzogian wonders, as in the film’s centerpiece: a one-take, real-time, impossibly loud goat birth scene. Unlike Weeping Camel or even the fairly stunning Inuit epic Atanarajut: The Fast Runner, Tulpan doesn’t lean too heavily on the novelty of its rarely filmed subjects. For that, and many other reasons, Tulpan is a hoot.

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