Dea Kulumbegashvili – 'April' movie review

From the very first frame of Dea Kulumbegashvili’s April, an inexplicable sense of dread and unease takes hold. The opening moment feels like a sharp intake of breath that stays trapped inside you, forcing the audience to experience the same helplessness, scrutiny, and fear as the film’s protagonist, Nina, an OB-GYN who provides abortions for women in her rural Georgian town. After being questioned for delivering a stillborn baby, Nina’s practice comes under intense scrutiny, as she tries to persist in her duties despite the risk to her career.

April is a vital and unflinching look at the ways women suffer under the patriarchy, with Kulumbegashvili forcing our gaze toward the insidious modes of oppression that make women prisoners within their own bodies. The film opens by contrasting two images: a naked, grotesque-looking monster—something notably female but stripped of obvious human qualities—and the sight of rain hitting tarmac. The tonal clash between these two sights, the unnatural and the natural, captures the jarring visceral power of April and its central message, drawing a stark line between the forces of nature that lie within our control and those that strip women of their right to choose.

Within the current arguments around abortion (which is insidiously still seen as a controversial and debatable human right), some people paint the idea of pregnancy and motherhood as an entirely natural and inevitable experience. However, April shows an alternative and ominously present reality in which she contrasts the serenity of the natural rural landscape with stifling images of Nina performing abortions on the women around her, with one of them being a completely static shot that lasts nearly fifteen minutes as she performs the procedure on a young teenage girl who a family member has sexually abused. Pregnancy is not an experience chosen willingly by many of the women in the town, with Nina encountering underage girls who are forced into marriage and motherhood, quietly being stripped of their autonomy and turned into slaves of the patriarchy. 

Each frame is haunted by an omnipresent feeling of violence, with still shots of thunderstorms and drooping flowers evoking an inescapable feeling of dread. Natural sights are turned into monstrosities at the hands of Kulumbegashvili, who infuses a sense of foreboding into every image as they become reflections of Nina’s powerlessness in helping these women and the looming threat that their freedom will be diminished by the end of the film.

Nina’s anxiety is characterised by the sight of the monster that opens the film, with the sound of its wheezing breaths being present throughout the entirety of the film, reflecting the depths of her despair and feeling of being trapped by this malignant force, doing everything in her duty to counteract its command while also being stuck in its web.

There is a moment in the film where you learn that the story takes place in 2023, emerging like a punch to the gut as you realise that this story is a reality for an increasing number of women. Motherhood is depicted as a primal and natural force, but Kulumbegashvili shows just how severely cruel and oppressive this force can be, continuing one long and oppressive life cycle that is violent and ultimately, life-destroying for too many women.

April highlights the consequences of the war on reproductive rights through her unflinching attack of the senses, with the female body becoming a powerless vessel that our eyes desperately try to escape, lingering inside our skin as we are immersed in the true horror of this fate

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