Joyce Glasser reviews OLGA (March 18, 2022) Cert TBC, 87 mins.
UK cinemas are doing their bit for Ukraine, promising to donate a percentage of profits for every ticket sold to Olga to the Disasters Emergency Committee. UK audiences might be the real winners as the percentage is not stipulated and “profit” is a nebulous concept in the film industry. What you can be sure of is that there will not be a more topical or timely film this year than Swiss writer-director Elie Grappe’s Olga.
Olga is set during Ukraine’s Maidan Revolution in February 2014, when the people overthrew the Russian puppet President Viktor Yanukovych in part over corruption, in part over repression, and in part over his anti-EU stance. Putin refused to recognise the interim government, a situation that allegedly justified or at least led to the invasion and annexation of Crimea, and then the Donbas war.
Olga (Anastasiia Budiashkina), a fifteen-year-old artistic gymnast, has been training for the Olympics most of her young life. In preparation for the European Championships, she is practising the technically challenging Jaeger move on the uneven parallel bars with dogged determination.
Olga’s mother, Ilona (Tanya Mikhina) is equally challenged as an investigative journalist critical of the Russian-backed president, Viktor Yanukovych. She is working on an incendiary article about the cronyism behind Ukraine’s illegal, shoddy construction industry, a problem that, as we know, is not confined to Yanukovych’s Ukraine.
When Ilona tells Olga that she cannot drive her to, or attend a tournament the following day because of work, they begin to argue about conflicting priorities. At that moment, the car is broadsided. While Olga is wounded, both women escape serious injury, but both know this was no accident.
As Olga’s deceased father was Swiss, and Olga has a Swiss family, albeit estranged, Ilona arranges for her to train at the Swiss Gymnastics team training centre where she will be safe. At first the luxurious single bedroom, the welcoming staff and the state-of-the-art facility comfort her like a false new dawn.
But Olga, who is struggling to improve her French in school, is excluded by the other girls. Petty jealousies develop, particularly when Olga, who is the first and last in the gym and out warming up, outperforms Steffi (Caterina Barloggio), the captain.
There is pressure to make some life changing decisions too, as to qualify for the Swiss team, Olga must become a citizen, and Ukraine does not allow dual citizenship.
Although Olga is making progress with French and gymnastics, a day with her father’s judgmental family is upsetting. They blame Ilona for the fact their son decided to remain in Ukraine after getting his dissertation. Olga finds herself defending her mother when her grandfather (Roger Jendly) criticises her as a mother for abandoning her child in a foreign country.
Olga’s application to the Swiss National Team having been accepted, she travels to the European Championships to compete. There she has a joyous reunion with her best friend from the Ukrainian team, Sasha, (Sabrina Rubtsova), but rebuffs a greeting from their former coach who has defected to the Russian squad. Sasha tells Olga she is volunteering at the barricades and plays a recording from the inspirational singing, although Sasha’s optimism and bravery will soon be severely tested.
Then the night before Olga is due to perform on the bars, Sasha informs Olga that her mother has been taken to hospital…
Grappe plays with an uncanny blurring of fiction and reality. The first-time actress who plays Olga, Anastasia Budiashkina, is a former Ukrainian gymnast, and like thousands of Ukrainian women, has recently fled the bombing in Kharkiv for Poland.
In contrast to her practised and polished hand stands on the parallel bars and somersaults over the vault, Ms Budiashkina’s performance in the film is raw and instinctive, as though we are watching a documentary.
The film is, of course, topical for more than its political contextualisation. The relationship between sport and mental health is explored in the film as it has been in real life recently. We all remember another artistic gymnast, the American champion Simone Bales, withdrawing from the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, and Emma Raducanu retiring from her fourth-round match at Wimbledon with breathing difficulties.
The relationship between Olga’s physical strength and determination to compete and her mental vulnerability in the face of destabilising events in her life creates a natural tension in the film. There is a lovely scene in which Olga and another girl who is practising by moonlight in the gym, start throwing chalk on one another, like a childish indoor snowball fight. The release of tension is palpable.
Grappe, and co-writer Raphaëlle Desplechin express the complexity of the human mind when, in a scene bordering on the horrific, Olga defies a doctor’s orders to rest an injured foot. One of Grappe’s two short films before making Olga, Suspendu (2015) is about a young dancer who injures his foot on the day of a dance examination but performs, trying to convince himself that the body has no limits.
If there is a flaw in the film, it is that there’s enough context without the issues of Olga’s mother’s competing career. While this is of course, another distraction for Olga, it is also a distraction for us, as the Sasha-Olga dichotomy already cover’s Olga’s torn national allegiances. This is, however, a small quibble in a surprisingly engrossing and timely directorial and acting debut.
