From the small and little known south Russian republic of Kalmykia, comes the story of a woman trapped in a futile life.
Elza is married to Dzhiga, a fisherman with whom she shares little. He is controlling, taciturn, unemotional. The opening scene shows Elza packing her case and walking away, but she never gets past the bus stop, realising that she has nowhere to go and this is her life.
Lacking money for a family event, Dzhiga embarks on an illegal fishing expedition, but ends up trapped in fast developing ice and frozen to death. Elza is left pregnant, rejected by her mother in law, even less sure of her future.
That sounds like there isn't much of a storyline, and this is certainly a film in which very little actually happens. Yet the hour and half passes swiftly, with far less tedium than you might think. In part because the window into Kalmkian culture is so intriguing, a society where the ubiquity of mobile phones jars with the observance of traditional custom and practice. While the cinematography, and musical score, are designed to convey the slow pace of life and bleakness of the surroundings. There is considerable use of long, fixed angle shots, with the action taking the eye from one side of the screen to the other. This brings a calmness to the film that we are unused to nowadays.
Not a movie for anyone who demands a bit of action, but fascinating for the slice of the alternative life it offers. And the gulls of the title? In Kalmyk culture they represent the souls of deceased fishermen.
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