European Films

Three interwoven portraits of women in different decades form an emotionally balanced picture of motherhood in Bulgaria in Milena Andonova’s debut Maimuni prez zimata (Monkeys in Winter). Living in 1961, 1981 and 2001, the protagonists are three very different women who all struggle with what sets them apart from their husbands or lovers: the fact that they can bear children. Somewhat reminiscent of pensive female triptych The Hours (but without its literary streak), Maimuni prez zimata has a preference for highlighting location and atmosphere over period detail that delicately hints at its more universal overtones, announcing Andonova as an important new talent to watch. In an ideal world, it would play in arthouses across the continent.

The film starts with a brief taste of each section; in 2001, a mother encourages her daughter Tana (Angelina Slavova) to “start working on children”; in 1981 Lucrecia (Diana Dobreva) has a nightmare involving a little girl in a swimming pool and in 1961 the beautiful Romany woman Dona (Bonka Ilieva-Boni), already abandoned by her husband, tries to stop a bailiff from loading pretty much all her meagre belongings into his car. In the first of the film’s simply observed yet enchanting moments, the brute leaves, his tyres raking up mud, as Dona starts singing a passionate ballad to process her anger.

During her work as a night time street cleaner Dona meets the driver Nacho, who has the honest and open face of a farmer and who seems to like her as much as she likes him. In another noteworthy sequence, the couple walks along a lake when the camera pans towards the reeds moving in the wind, the air filled with pollen. The gentle up-and-down movement of the reeds and the presence of the pollen (busy ensuring the survival of the species) subtly allude to what must be happening off screen.

In the second segment, which has some of the best scenes in the film but is not as emotionally resonant because of a somewhat muddled structure, Lucrecia is a successful law graduate lobbying for a workplace in the capital but is assigned to the countryside instead. Desperate, she follows the unsound advice from her beautician, who told her to get pregnant and then marry someone from Sophia, thus securing a working place there. The foreplay and love-making scene with her victim is another gem: they jump on beds on opposite sides of the small bedroom, undressing as Lucrecia orders to stop for a military salute between every piece of clothing shed; frantic running around the house while further undressing and saluting ensues. When they finally do the deed, things have sobered up as Lucrecia is heard reciting a letter to her mother, which recounts a terrible dream she had in which she was queuing up for some nice shoes, only to have the last pair snatched away before her when she arrives at the counter. “I hate crowds”, she says.

What seems like bliss initially can soon turn sour, and this is one of underlying ideas of Maimuni prez zimata. Being a lover and being a mother are not necessarily the same thing. Lucrecia was excited about the prospect of sex, but she does not love the father of her future child and is probably not sure she really wants one or is even ready for it. When she meets a French syphilis expert, she discovers what love can be like, but will he want her while she is pregnant of someone else’s baby? Dona thought she had met her match in Nacho, but he leaves her because he loves her: “You are still young. There will be something better for you in the future than cleaning streets”. The next day, he is gone. Tana, in 2001, is also left by her husband because he cannot stand to be with her; the problem in their getting a child turned out to be him, not her. When she finally does become pregnant, all hell breaks loose.

All films composed of several separate stories are only as strong as its weakest segment, but here Andonova circumvents this problem by offering three distinct segments that are excellent across the board, making for a very solid triptych in which her reflections on mother- and womanhood are aided by careful cross-pollination. Maimuni prez zimata is an incredible first film that is filled to the brim with memorable images; it is an intelligent and modern take on a classic theme.   

Boyd van Hoeij named Maimuni prez zimata as one of the ten Best Films of 2006.

This film was screened as part of the 2006 Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. 

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