Pour aller au ciel, il faut mourir

TO GET TO HEAVEN, FIRST YOU HAVE TO DIE (2006) is a film by Jamshed Usmonov set in the director's native Tajikistan. Kamal (Khurshed Golibekov) is a young man who has recently married, but he suffers from impotence and has been unable to consummate his marriage. After three months, he visits a doctor and then undertakes to learn the art of love from some older woman in the capital. The first half of the film has him stalking various women around Dushanbe. This odyssey in an American film would probably have been portrayed in a goofy underdog fashion, but Kamal's attempts are creepy, though we do feel his pain.

About halfway through the film, Kamal ends up sleeping with the wife (Dinara Drukarova) of a thug (Maruf Pulodzoda). This lowlife finds out, he doesn't mind as he had been separated from his wife for some time anyway, and takes Kamal under his wing as they burgle their way around town. After witnessing the full extent of his partner's brutality, Kamal turns on him in a bloody fashion, which happens to cure his sexual dysfunction.

All in all, I can't recommend TO GET TO HEAVEN to general audiences. This isn't the first film I've seen by a young director that begins in one way and then transitions too suddenly into mobsters and violence. Yes, I get the Oedipal allusions and the probing of the male psyche, but the plot arc chosen for this study just screams "immature scriptwriter". The cinematography is also unimaginative.

I could compliment only two aspects, which will probably only interest a rather niche audience. One is that I was bound for Tajikistan in less than a week as I watched the film, and there are few internationally available films from the country, so I guess TO GET TO HEAVEN was useful as a glimpse of Tajikistan. The acting by Drukarova and Pulodzoda was competent, and perhaps the same could be said for Golibekov if the character he portrays weren't too cringingly awkward to really appreciate.

Set in Tajikistan this film has a lot that pleases, but sadly I found the treatment of women in it appalling. They are either assaulted sexually or left after a male has proved his virility. I have to put this out of context, because it is there and arguably the director of this very well made film had his reasons. Basically it is about a 20year old who is impotent with his young wife and for half of the film tries to find a woman to rectify this. He falls in with gangsters while doing so, and despite unpleasant scenes the film does not indulge itself in full on sensationalism. End of spoilers. The film too has the courage to show male genitalia and is not afraid of doing so; a lesson for gay and straight actors to get over the fact that that they are not ' vulnerable ' in doing so. I do recommend this perhaps hard to find film for its depiction of it's both luxurious and often grubby surroundings, and there is very little glamour to hide the world it depicts. Maybe it deserves a higher rating. I have very mixed feelings about certain aspects that I found repellent.