Cinema
A Limousine the Colour of Midsummer's Eve
Limuzīns Jāņu nakts krāsā
Jānis Streičs · 1981
Synopsis
Aunt Mirta, a poor old woman who lives alone in the countryside, wins a car in the lottery, a VAZ-2101. Forgotten relatives and acquaintances immediately descend on her house like locusts: the nephew leaves a tourist coach and hitchhikes, the former daughter-in-law arrives unannounced, the neighbours become obliging. All of them mow her grass, dig a cellar, do her cooking and housework in the hope of inheriting the car, and Mirta enjoys the attention she is given.
Context
A colour television film of seventy-nine minutes, written by Māra Svīre, photographed by Harijs Kukels, with music by Raimonds Pauls and Lilita Bērziņa in the role of Mirta. It received the Lielais Kristaps in 1981, the major award of Latvian cinema. Latvians Online reads in it a parody of the Soviet system and a moral about greed, and Daira Āboliņa compares it to Richard III and Hamlet. Television broadcasts it every year before Midsummer.
Who it is for
A rustic comedy, funny and warm, in which the satire of Soviet life can be sensed beneath the farce.
Prizes and reception
Chosen by the public as the best Latvian film of all time, and included in the Latvian Cultural Canon.
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