Pahriya Ghalip graduated from the Beijing Film Academy. She is good at observing the gaps in the lives of ordinary people and focusing on various social issues. She likes experimental and creative expression. Her documentary work has been selected for the Norwegian Documentary Film Festival and collected by the Rose Golden Archive at Cornell University. “Ada” which had its premiere at Tallinn and was shot by an all-female creative time, is one of her first attempts at a feature short.
Ada is distributed by Dogme23.
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The film begins with two Uighur woman, Darya and Yultuz, dressed in rather colourful dresses, playing a variation of rock, paper scissors. They continue playing, running in the streets, until they return to their apartment, where they drink and watch “Roman Holiday” on TV. Well, actually, one of the two is watching, because the other is sending messages in her phone, while an initially innocent antilogue soon turns into a harsh verbal fighting, and eventually into a physical one. The two of them, however, soom make up, and continue hanging out together, in a bar, recording a man who talks about love in the harshest fashion, meeting an angel, and in the end, inside a car.
The most evident thing one will notice here is the visual flair, with the combination of the 4:3 cinematography by Huang Xuiyi, coloring, set design and the many close ups working particularly well, additionally because Pahriya Galip had both the imagination and the means (and crew) to substantiate it on the screen. The finger dance, the running through the streets and the presence of the angel are the highlights of this element, in a short though, that truly thrives on its audiovisual approach.
At the same time, the context here is quite rich. For starters, the differences between the girls, with one being a hopeless romantic, expecting to find love through movies and becoming a filmmaker herself, the other pragmatic, shaping herself and her appearance in order to attract men, with her interactions in her phone moving towards the same direction are comment unto itself about two major categories of women. Expectedly, such a radical difference eventually leads to a clash, but Galip also shows the friendship is a value that moves beyond differences, with the final scene and the connection with the concept of ‘mother’ cementing the fact in the best fashion. The concept of filmmaking and the occasional toxicity of men are also commented upon, although in a way that can easily be described as epidermal.
One will also laugh with the way the girls dismiss the fact that they both saw an angel as something that is the result of drinking, with the movie actually exhibiting a source of hilarity throughout its 18 minutes (there is also a scene after the ending credits btw).
The acting by Effy as Darya and Nefisse as Yulutz is characterized by a purposeful theatricality, with the occasionally hyperbolic mannerisms of both actresses fitting both the aforementioned hillarity and the overall aesthetics of the movie, in the best fashion.
“Ada” is a fun film, that benefits the most by its visuals and the acting, in an overall presentation that is quite pleasant to watch.
