Kazakh Zhannat Alshanova's graduation film from the London Film School, “End of Season”, premiered at Cannes Film Festival (Cinefondation), won Most Promising Director Award in Tel-Aviv and Best Cinematography Award in Munich.
The story revolves around Rosa, a 50 year old woman who arrives at her husband resort, a small hotel in the vast dry steppe, to check on staff and collect the accounts. As the film begins, she is found sitting in embryonic stance by the side of the road, when two women stop and try and help her, although she seems completely unresponsive, in some kind of trance, in which she sees a young girl in a bus, which does not appear to actually be there, however. The next scene has her sitting on a kind of doctor's bed, where a younger man asks her about her problem, and she lets him know that her leg is hurting, with him proceeding on treating it.
Rosa seems to be annoyed by something, and a phone call by her husband informing her that he is going to be away on business seems to infuriate her, although her feelings are barely visible on her rather hard and inexpressive face. The image of the same girl appears once more, and this time, it becomes more obvious that this is an image from her past, probably her reminiscing about her young age.
As she goes on picking up a bunch of papers from an empty pool, in a scene that seems to imply that she threw them there in a fit, the young man who treated her asks her about why she stopped swimming, with her mentioning another injury, this time of her shoulder. Her rage is palpable now, and a mother with two kids who asks about the pool gets a truly cold stare that has her almost running off.
Rosa continues moving on her own through the premises, spending her days in a depressed mundanity, although the younger man is soon revealed to have become (or already was) a lover, in a scene that seems a bit awkward though. The women who picked her up from the side of the road are actually employees in the resort, but do not seem to recognize her, an attitude she seems to prefer, as she is not much of social person. The man her husband sent to pick her up eventually arrives, but Rosa almost kicks him out, instead preferring to lie on her own in her room, with a doctor who comes to check on her leg a bit later sharing the same fate.
Just like the vacation season, so does her life seems to be at an awkward end, but the images of the pools in the resort wake something in her, as she finally decides to take a swim.
Zhannat Alshanova directs a slow film that thrives on minimalism, with Rosa's character mirroring and “guiding” this approach in the most impressive fashion. Her laconic, essentially unsocial attitude is also exhibited in her appearance, with her very short hair and her monochrome clothes giving her a look that could be described as militant. The fact that she seems to believe her life has reached a dead end is rather evident in that regard, with the only thing keeping her going being her anger. Sleeping with the young man does not help, and Rosa continues to be lost and angry, searching for something she seems to have when she was younger, as exhibited in those brief segments featuring the young girl. Eventually, though, she finds something she wants, and she dives head on in it, literally, although the ending Alshanova provides does not exactly give a clear explanation, as is essentially the case with the whole film.
Roza Khayrullina gives an impressive performance as Rosa, highlighting all the aforementioned aspects through rather eloquent silences, with the few moments some small twitches in her face and some intense looks imply her anger being quite impressive, even reaching the borders of being scary.
The second impressive aspect of the short is Cem Demirerr's cinematography, with his framing and the many close-ups to Rosa's hard face communicating her depression, as much as the sense that she is lost in a kind of routine that does not even last to the point of being considered everyday life. The pools, once empty and eventually filled in impressively colored blue are also excellently portrayed as the problem and the solution respectively, additionally providing images that allow the viewer some relief from the ascetic images of Rosa.
“End of Season” is a distinctly art-house film, which aims at providing food for thought to the viewer instead of spoon feeding, through an open for interpretation narrative that also manages to entertain, particularly through the acting of the protagonist and the cinematography.
