Natasha

This is a coming-of-age movie about 16-year-old Mark, but it's much different than the usual fare. First, although shot in Toronto with an American director, about 75% of the film is in Russian with sub-titles. Second and more important, the other main character, Natasha, is s 14-year-old recent émigré from Ukraine who has seen way too many "worldly" things at way too young an age.

The unlikely friendship/romance between Mark and Natasha begins when they're thrown together when her mother marries his uncle. Natasha never smiles, says a character. But Mark is assigned by his mother to show her around their suburban town, which he dutifully does. And gradually, she learns to trust him.

There is a sweetness and tenderness that develops between Mark and Natasha, but the causes of her underlying sadness lurk nearby. It would give away too much to provide more detail. So suffice it to say that the movie works well for the most part, portraying two teenagers who both speak Russian but otherwise have very different backgrounds and life experiences, yet come together in a natural and believable way.

The use of Russian with English subtitles is so well integrated into the story that I barely noticed. It looks and feels like an English-speaking film, just one in which the principals speak mostly Rusian.

From online descriptions this began to sound like a romance. And it is one at its heart. You want to believe that the story might carry itself and that the details are there just to lend authenticity. But in this film the opposite happens: it gets so bogged down by its own details that the story itself drowns.

First we have the older generation debating over what characteristics make one Jewish enough. But none of them newly in Canada seems to keep Judaism close at heart - they don't go to a synagogue and never pray or even refer to the Bible; so what is the point?

Then we have the teenager and his older friends trading in marijuana. At least one of them is growing it and several apparently smoke it. Instead of introducing the audience to characters, the pot-trading characters look shallow and stupid. It's a backward step in plot development - more interesting characters would give Tasha people to react to or learn from.

But when Mark shows Tasha round the neighbourhood, he never teaches her anything about her newly adopted-culture except how to inhale. So now both of them look shallow and stupid; the smoking doesn't advance their relationship; and neither of them smiles at the other.

In fact Tasha never learns any English and though Mark speaks English at them most of his relatives never use it, though they all must know it (so do mind the subtitles). This barrier remains one through the whole plot and keeps the teens' relationship at a standstill - exactly what the audience does not expect or want.

Ultimately the only character you care about is Tasha, whilst no-one else in the movie cares about her - as a sympathetic character no-one even thinks of or mentions here. These self-centred immigrants don't even stick together to worry about or support a young member of their own whom they have to know is in serious trouble.

I found myself cheering for Tasha to make the life change she mentions for herself; but the film concludes leaving us no idea what will happen to her at all. So having drowned in its side stories (none of which is ever resolved) the film simply ends, as though it has run out of time, with nothing positive to recommend itself. And to me that's a tragic waste of an intriguing story line.