BLACKBIRD BLACKBIRD BLACKBERRY

Often the world seems entirely out of control, random and frighteningly unpredictable, and then something happens that offers the possibility of cosmic order, a grand design, or some faint sense of determinism.

Take, for example, the book-ending of my bank holiday weekend with two films - glossy Anne Hathaway and Nicholas Galitzine romcom THE IDEA OF YOU and post-Soviet Georgian drama BLACKBIRD BLACKBIRD BLACKBERRY, with a phenomenal central performance from Eka Chavleishvili - which couldn’t appear to be more different from one another, but turn out to be EXACTLY THE SAME MOVIE (on some not entirely obvious, but truly fundamental level…).

Both films are about forty-something independent, professional women (one runs a high end art gallery, while t’other runs a bare-shelved cleaning supply company… I’ll let you do the maths….) meeting new men (one meets a handsome young member of a British boy band, while t’other meets an aged, married truck driver… again, I’ll leave you to fill in the blanks…) who awaken their latent sexuality and restore their joie de vivre.

I identified with both Solene and Etero, coveting the career of the former and the astonishingly well-formed eyebrows of the latter, recognising that I (and almost all women) sit somewhere in the middle, edging towards Solene in our fantasy-lives and towards Etero as reality hits.  And I was grateful to watch two stories of women of a certain age unexpectedly getting a bit of love in their lives, and happy to entertain the thought that these two movies perhaps aligned to let me know that I, too, might have one more shot at romance (albeit probs not with Nicholas Galitzine…).  What’s not to like about that? 🤷🏻‍♀️

And so I begin this post-long weekend Tuesday morning persuaded there might be some order in the chaos, some divine providence, and I am (briefly) full of hope.  And for that, I think BLACKBIRD BLACKBIRD BLACKBERRY and Eka Chavleishvili and her wonderful eyebrows have easily earned their ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️