Bizarre doesn’t begin to cover Celestial Wives of the Meadow Mari’s collection of wild and weird vignettes, filmed on location with the Mari people of remote Northern Russia by Silent Souls
director Aleksey Fedorchenko. Each self-contained segment introduces a
different female protagonist, and collectively the tales offer
considerable variety: sometimes tragic, sometimes comic, but often some
indescribable (and frequently discomforting) middle ground.
Sex and magic act as twin totems, with the Mari’s Pagan folklore
parlayed into a series of vivid dramas filled with hexes and ritual:
prayers are made to trees; corpses are reanimated to avenge spurned
love; and in one exceptionally offbeat offering, a live bird takes up
residence in a woman’s vagina after a run-in with a forest giant. At its
best, the results capture something of Swedish auteur Roy Andersson’s
deadpan sketches, though the comparison is perhaps over-flattering to
Fedorchenko, who lacks the equivalent pathos. Instead we get bawdy
oddness in spades, which ensures you won’t easily forget time spent in
its company.
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