Me, bebia, Iliko da Ilarioni

This is a very nice comedy but probably one has to be Georgian to fully understand it.

What may come as a surprise for some western viewers - is that in a soviet film of 1962 - there is virtually nothing spoken about communism and politics. Even WWII that has definite impact on the life of residents of small Georgian village goes on somewhere far away and can be felt but not seen.

Film is based on one of the most popular novels of N. Dumbadze - writer whose humoristic, touching, very insightful and at the same time easy to read novels and short stories made him incredibly popular among Georgians. Of course, fans of the book find the film inferior to the novel, but still quite nice. The only real complain that was ever made about it - that the male lead seems to be more of a well-brought middle-class city boy, than a smart, sly, provincial, but still adorable character of the book.

As I mentioned the film is a comedy but contains one rather sad episode where S. Takaishvili provides really stellar performance.

The director - T. Abuladze later made Tree of Wishes and Repentance that are among the greatest films ever made in Georgia.