Wet Sand (Elene Naveriani, 2021) (Patreon)

SPOILERS, but you'll never see this anyway.

I suppose as fascism continues to rise the world over, we can expect art in general to get dumber and dumber. It's obvious the Elene Naveriani is a talented young director, and her second film, Wet Sand, certainly has the best intentions. However, she does not really expand on the standard outsiders-vs.-savages template, perhaps because she feels that this story is so important to tell that she cannot risk something as unruly as ambiguity.

Wet Sand is the name of a small bar and cafe in a little Georgian village right on the Black Sea. It's the only real destination in the town, so practically everyone goes, which means everyone has cause to interact with Amnon (Gia Agumava), the bar's taciturn proprietor. Early in the film, he and his waitress / bartender Fleshka (Megi Kobaladze) overhear a news report on the TV that the Christian patriarch of Georgia has declared National Family Day, on a date that used to be National Anti-Homophobia Day. This minor detail is anything but; it's Naveriani's statement of purpose.

The suicide of an old man, Eliko, disrupts the smug facade of the village. People remark that they never liked him but can't put their finger on exactly why. Soon, Eliko's granddaughter Moe (the terrific Bebe Sesitashvili) comes back to town for the funeral after a ten-year stint in Tbilisi. With her short hair, tattoos, and unwillingness to walk five paces behind every man in the village (I'm exaggerating, but not by much), she immediately raises suspicion. And things unfold pretty much as you'd expect.

Naveriani has a good eye for composition and blocking. One review compared Wet Sand to Kaurismäki and that's not entirely off base. And one of the impressive conceits of the film is that, in a tiny, backwards town in Nowheresville, Georgia, there are actually quite a few queer people. But Naveriani's final act, while seemingly defiant (think Top of the Lake, or really even Northern Exposure), fails to grasp the patriarchal Christian mindset. Two older gay men are sentenced to death, basically, but Wet Sand 2.0, run by two hot young lesbians, is something the Neanderthals can tolerate. I wonder why?

ADDENDUM: I forgot to mention, the curly Georgian alphabet is really nicely suited to neon!