Under the Same Sky

And a bilious sky it is: toxic yellow one minute, grass green the next. No doubt the skewed colours are a kind of objective correlative for the mood of Rufie (Kondova), its angsty 16-year-old heroine who lives with her grandmother in a hill village populated by ancients and gossips. Like everyone else who could stump up the traffickerís fee, Rufieís dad decamped for Turkey years ago and hasnít been heard of since ? unless you count the messages he sends to his daughter ‘across the sky’… Shot on video with a 4:3 frame, Kroumovís fifth feature makes an earnest, if somewhat anaemic, folk tale. It’s at once atmospheric and artificial, its through-and-through simplicity its main strength and its main weakness.