‘The Antique’ Review: An Unlikely Bond Blossoms in a Hostile Climate in Georgia’s Stately Oscar Submission

variety.com:

Guy Lodge Film Critic In Rusudan Glurjidze‘s weathered, wintry sophomore feature “The Antique,” the title could refer to any number of withering relics: the handsome, richly patinaed items of furniture that Georgian immigrant Medea (Salome Demuria) illegally imports from her homeland to Russia to sell; the once-grand but disintegrating Saint Petersburg apartment that she buys at a reduced price, on a peculiar condition; or Vadim (the late Sergey Dreyden), the apartment’s elderly, crotchety former owner, who insists on living there even after the deeds have been transferred.

Or it could just be Russia itself, a venerable state resistant to an evolving population, captured here in the midst of an aggressive 2006 drive to expel or eliminate thousands of settled ethnic Georgians.

Glurijidze’s film sometimes hardens and freezes with lingering anger over that injustice, but that’s beneath the warmer veneer of a genial culture-clash tale, in which ostensibly opposed characters recognize in each other a common degree of damage: Everything and everyone is a bit shopworn in “The Antique,” which isn’t shy about stretching an elegiac metaphor.

Like the director’s exquisite 2016 debut “House of Others” — likewise chosen as Georgia’s international Oscar submission — her second feature is a melancholic, atmospheric and ravishingly shot slice of recent history, funnelling wider social and political crises through more intimately drawn character conflicts.