Direction: Levan Koguashvili
Country: Georgia
As a tightly controlled, low-boil send-up from Georgia, Brighton 4th partly succeeds, being an often amusing, sometimes off-kilter and ultimately elegiac immigrant song written and directed by Levan Koguashvili from a screenplay by Boris Frumin.
The story is about a good-natured man and former wrestling champion, Kakhi (Levan Tedaishvili), who travels from Tbilisi to Brooklyn to fix a debt owed by his son, Soso (Giorgi Tabidze), who is not sleeping nor studying as he was supposed to. Staying in a hostel ran by his sister-in-law (Tsutsa Kapanadze), Kakhi ends up negotiating with the local Georgian mafia in a way that is as peculiar as unconvincing. He also helps with a case of injustice related to fellow countrywomen who are not being paid.
Both the mise-en-scene and socio-economic realities depicted here are strong and compelling, but the film takes a bit too much time with alcohol-filled gatherings and Georgian chants. With that said, it still demonstrates the daily life and struggle of these people without resorting to misery or sentimentalism. Koguashvili prefers an intermittent caustic humor, connecting us with his sensitive character as he finds enough cultural specificity to keep the story afloat.
It’s a shame that, despite a flawless characterization, the storytelling sometimes gets stranded in dispensable details and unlikely resolutions.
