Luna Papa | Moon Father (1999)

LUNA PAPA is a fantastic trip through the wild landscapes of Central Asia in which tradition and superstition clash with the chaos of the post-modern world.

Synopsis

Luna Papa, Khudoynazarov's third feature, is a humorous and fairy-tale story about love. 'The love of a mother for her son, of Icarus for the sun, and of a worm for the apple', according to Khudoynazarov.

The beautiful sets contribute to the supernatural mood of the film, as a metaphor for the situation in Central Asia, where the clash between the modern era and tradition have turned reality into something fantastic. 



In a small village near Samarkand lives the eccentric Bekmuradova family: Mamlakat (17), her father Safar and her brother Nasreddin, who went mad in the Afghan war.

This desolate corner of the world is filled with dark figures: the only ones to maintain law and order are a couple of ex-soldiers who drive around in an old tank.

Mamlakat is mad about the stage and dreams of becoming an actress. One bright moonlit night, she is seduced by a beautiful and mysterious actor, who leaves her behind, pregnant.



Together with a girlfriend, she travels to the city for an abortion, but just before the operation, the old doctor dies in a bizarre way. She has to admit to her father that she is pregnant. So the family set off - travelling through Central Asia in search of the father of the child, to save the family face.

In a small village not far from Samarkand, seventeen-year-old Mamlakat dreams of becoming an actress. One moonlit night, she is seduced by a mysterious stranger who claims to be a friend of Tom Cruise. He then dissapears, leaving Mamlakat pregnant.



For her father Safar and brother Nasreddin restoring of the family honour is a question of pride, and they set out together to find the culprit.

From inside the womb, Khabibulla, who was conceived on that miraculous night, provides a commentary on the incredible adventures and bizarre mishaps that befall the threesome on their search for his father.

Cast: Chulpan Khamatova, Moritz Bleibtreu, Ato Mukhamedzhanov, Merab Ninidze, Polina Rajkina, Nikolai Fomenko, Lola Mirzorakhimova, Sherali Abdulkajsov, Dinmukhammed Akhimov ....

Awards

  2000. Bergen International Film Festival. Jury Award (Bakhtyar Khudojnazarov)
  2000. Brussels International Film Festival. FIPRESCI Award - Special Mention(Bakhtyar Khudojnazarov)
  2000. Young Europian Jury Award (Bakhtyar Khudojnazarov)
  2000. Nantes Three Continents Festival. Golden Montgoliere (Bakhtyar Khudojnazarov)
  2001. Nika Awards. Best Director (Bakhtyar Khudojnazarov). Best Actress (Chulpan Khamatova). Best Film.
  1999. Tokyo International Film Festival. Best Artistic Contribution Award.

Long Synopsis

In a small village not far from Samarkand lives the somewhat eccentric Bekmoura-dova family: 17-year-old Mamlakat (Chulpan Khamatova); her widowed father, Safar (Ato Mukhamedshanov); and her brother, Nasreddin (Moritz Bleibtreu), who is mentally much the worse for wear as a result of the war in Afghanistan.

This desolate little corner of Central Asia is teeming with gangsters, small-time con men and other shady individuals. The police are useless and hardly ever in evidence, so law and order is represented by a group of former soldiers who drive round in an old tank.

Mamlakat dreams of being an actress and is always hanging around theatres. One bright, moonlit night, she is seduced by a self-proclaimed actor (who also claims to be a friend of Tom Cruise). The mysterious stranger sub-sequently vanishes into the night, and Mamlakat soon realises she is pregnant.

Accompanied by her girlfriend, Sube, she travels to a nearby town for an abortion. But just as the doctor is about to perform the operation, he dies in an extremely odd manner and Khabibulla, the unborn child, survives.

When Mamlakat confesses to her father that she is pregnant, his immediate reaction is that family honour must be avenged, so he sets out with Mamlakat and Nasreddin in search of the child’s father.

Travelling in an old transporter, the trio stumble from one disturbance to the next. They comb every theatre, interrupting the performances; they get caught up in a high-speed chase involving an illegal blood-donor bus and a police jeep; and they nearly end up in a kidnapping when a bunch of gangsters mix up the room numbers in a Samarkand hotel. But the father of Mamlakat’s child remains unfound.

Meanwhile, Mamlakat’s tummy keeps getting bigger and she is ostracised by the superstitious villagers, who accuse her of being a whore. A second abortion attempt by an old herbalist woman is thwarted at the last minute by her father and her brother. 

Tired and discouraged, Mamlakat sets off on her own and finally finds a loving man who is prepared to act as father to her child. But before the wedding party is even over, another unlikely accident puts a new jinx on the happiness Mamlakat had always yearned for... (Prisma film)

I caught this "tragicomedy" from the Russian republic of Tadjikistan on the final weekend of the 1999 Toronto Film Festival, and was surprised at its broad appeal and easy accessibility.

The setup is this: a petite girl in her late teens named Mamlakat mysteriously gets seduced and impregnated by someone she hears (but never gets a full look at) on a full moon night when a touring troupe of actors has flown into her small town for a performance of one of Shakespeare's plays.

Adding considerable stress to her plight is the fact that her gruff-but-lovable father is widowed and finding it increasingly difficult to support her older brother, a former soldier who suffered permanent brain damage in battle and is now the town idiot. 

When the girl reveals her condition to her father, he's determined to find the responsible party, and there's considerable mirth as the family of three tours south central Russia in an attempt to locate the actor by attending plays and having Mamlakat try to identify the voice. The film has a lot of beautiful landscapes (reminiscent of those in THE ENGLISH PATIENT), the production values are excellent, the pacing never drags, there are many laughs, and the three leads are extremely well-cast. (The idiot brother, BTW is played by Moritz Bleibtreu, the dim bulb boyfriend in RUN LOLA RUN. He's excellent -- a bit like Harpo Marx with a limited vocabulary -- but MAN ... he'd better start playing some swifter characters SOON if he wants to avoid typecasting!)

My main cavil: For a film from this exotic a locale, it's just a tad too WESTERN in its sensibilities and techniques. Director Bakhtiyar Khudojnazarov has obviously been a keen student of western popular entertainment. LUNA PAPA is like seeing proven Hollywood crowd-pleasing conventions effectively transplanted to a completely different culture, and I'm not sure that this is necessarily a good thing. There's no questioning that the movie's far more accessible to western audiences as a result, though.

The film didn't have an American distributor at the time of its Toronto screening, but that should definitely change come Oscar time. This is EXACTLY the kind of good-natured, sentimental, non-groundbreaking, non-controversial, Hollywood-reverential movie (think KOLYA) that AMPAS loves to reward in the foreign language category. And there's an added bonus that Hollywood stands to reap for rewarding it: right-wing religious conservatives who are always blaming the entertainment industry for everything will simply LOVE the film's handling of the abortion issue! (Jeffrey W. Levin)

Read about this film

Country: Germany | Japan | Tajikistan
Language: Russian
Color: Color
Runtime: 107 min.