A low-key, tender, and, in the end, disturbing story of female adolescence set in a time and place not often depicted in cinema: post-Soviet Georgia circa the early 1990s. The overcast instability of the environment, with its frantic bread lines, civil conflicts, and general atmosphere of potential doom, lends extra fascination and immediacy to the subdued story of teenage best friends (Lika Babluani and Mariam Bokeria, both graceful and natural) and the cruelties visited upon them by ambivalent adults, chauvinistic male peers, and the dire economic and political state of their country. Among these cruelties is an act of so-called "bride kidnapping," which is troubling in and of itself, but even more gut-wrenching are the resigned responses of people who should protest. The film's cinematographer is Oleg Mutu, known for his European Film Award-winning lensing of the monumental 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. The visual quality here is similar: shots are long (at times extremely so), hand-held, and largely in dowdily evocative shades of grey.

B+