REVIEW: ‘Zift’

• ‘Zift’
• 2008
• Directed by Javor Gadev
• Starring Zahari Baharov, Tanya Ilieva and Vladimir Penev

 

Directed by Javor Gadev in 2008, ‘Zift’ is a tale of love, murder and betrayal.  It is based on Vladislav Todorov’s 2006 novel of the same name and combines neo-noir and black comedy with Sots Art and political motifs.  The twisted love story was Bulgaria’s official submission to the 2009 Academy Awards’ Best Foreign Language Film category and will finally be released on DVD in the UK by ISIS on 20th February.  Derived from Arabic, the film’s title means “asphalt”, a black natural resin used as filler for road surfaces and a once-popular chewing substance among gangs in Sofia.  The word is also urban slang for “shit” and it is this second definition that becomes the recurring philosophy of the movie as we are shown the large amount of faecal matter that humans must wade through over the course of their lives.

Revealed non-linearly through a series of flashbacks and filmed totally in black-and-white, ‘Zift’ begins with the film’s tough, streetwise protagonist, Moth (Zahari Baharov), emerging from prison after serving 20 long years for a murder that he did not commit.  Although wrongly convicted, he was a part of the attempted diamond heist during which the murder was committed.  Moth, his beautiful wife, Mantis (Tanya Ilieva), and their shady accomplice, Slug (Vladimir Penev), had planned to steal a large black diamond from a wealthy jeweller named Vlad the Bijou (Jordan Mutafov), for whom Mantis had been working as a maid.  The robbery was a failure, leaving Moth wounded and captured by the police, while the jeweller is killed by Slug who himself manages to escape.  The diamond, however, was never found.

Moth was jailed shortly before the Communist coup d’état of 1944 so now finds himself in new and unfamiliar surroundings – the grey, totalitarian world of 1960s Sofia.  To add to his misery, Moth never had a chance to meet his son, Leonid, who was born while he was in prison and who died while still very young.  Aware of Moth’s release, Slug (who, after embracing the new regime, is now an influential member of the Communist Party) interrogates his former ally in a hidden chamber, using devices of state-sanctioned evil in an attempt to discover the location of the missing diamond.  Despite managing to escape from Slug and his henchmen, Moth unknowingly consumes wine that has been poisoned with iridium and takes to the decrepit, decaying city of Sofia a doomed man.

While searching the streets and bars in the hope of finding Mantis, our beleaguered, zift-chewing hero encounters a bizarre parade of characters – medics, patients, outcasts, gravediggers and local drunks – each a storyteller with his own philosophical view on life, comical tale of ironic misfortune or absurd urban myth.  The main narrative is repeatedly put on hold while another character relates his interesting and often unusual story about life in a Communist society and it is these moments, filled with clever anecdotes and witty monologues, that enable ‘Zift’ to remain a fairly philosophical and contemplative film as well as an action-packed thriller.  This combination of standard noir devices, ironic humour and reflective social comment enables Gadev to beautifully portray a Bulgarian capital that is at different times nightmarish, comical and beautifully surreal, which is rather impressive considering it is his directorial debut.

In addition to the recurring theme of “shit”, the notion of the destructive power of women, explained to Moth by his former cellmate and mentor, Van Wurst the Eye (Mihail Mutafov), also permeates the film.  When Moth is finally reunited with Mantis, the true nature of the femme fatale is revealed to the audience as the film cuts between scenes of the pair indulging in wild, passionate sex and nature documentary close-ups of a praying mantis devouring the head of her partner during copulation.  Knowingly just how deadly it may prove to be, Moth reveals the whereabouts of the missing diamond to Mantis and the two of them immediately set off to retrieve it.  It is not long before Moth realises that he has been betrayed but, determined not to give up the diamond, he manages to exact his revenge before finally, revealing the truth about the mysterious precious stone.

‘Zift’ is a very accomplished piece of cinema – the performances are superb, the film is wonderfully presented in black-and-white, there are some glorious shots of Sofia’s imposing Communist architecture and the story is communicated through a rich language of metaphor and symbolism.  The director confidently employs a range of devices and techniques that make this fast-paced thriller an interesting Eastern European take on the neo-noir genre and a triumph in the history of modern Bulgarian cinema.

The characters all possess highly evocative nicknames; Moth is equipped with an ingeniously vulgar tattoo; radio announcements are used to mark the passage of time; and, aside from the one appalling display of special effects involving a bouncing eyeball, the film is sophisticated, fashionable and arty.  This is a huge credit to the skilled Gadev, who has made ‘Zift’ surprisingly stylish and elegant for a film that wallows in the filth of human nature.

 

Rating: 7/10

Tags: Javor Gadev, Jordan Mutafov, Mihail Mutafov, Tanya Ilieva, Vladimir Penev, Zahari Baharov, Zift