The emotional weight of the film rests most heavily on the shoulders of Maia Doveik (left).
Publicity photo (Jāņas Deinat).
Agnese Logina, “Kultūrzīme”, JSC “Latvijas Mediji”
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The feature film “Mother’s milk” directed by Ināra Kolmanes is a classic and thorough film that approaches the source material with respect and reverence, without being afraid to leave essential elements of the book out of the frame.
Nora Iksten’s novel “Mother’s milk” has conquered the hearts of readers both in Latvia and abroad since its publication in late 2015, and last week the long-awaited screen adaptation of the novel, directed by Ināra Kolmane and produced by the studio “Deviņi” (producers Jānis Juhņevičs and Marta Romanova-Jacobson). The author of the film script is Arvis Kolmanis, the composer is Raimonds Tiguls, Latvian, Lithuanian and Czech cinema professionals are involved in the making of the film.
Film adaptations of widely loved books can be a challenge, as the audience already has their own vision of how the events of the book should look, and it is impossible to include everything that happens in the book in the film adaptation, and the filmmakers always have to leave something behind the scenes. However, once the film is on the screen, it takes on a life of its own, independent of the source material, and although comparisons cannot be avoided, literature and cinema have access to different means of artistic expression that allow the story to be told in a completely different way. “Mother’s milk” is a classic and thorough film that approaches the source material with respect and reverence, also not being afraid to leave essential elements of the book out of the frame, perhaps trusting that the audience will be able to fill in the blank spaces left with the knowledge gained in the book. The film does not offer big surprises and experiments, but it accurately uses the language of cinema to tell this story.
“Mother’s Milk” is a story about three generations of women in 20th century Latvia and how the political regime in which they live affects and traumatizes their relationships, as the surrounding environment limits the potential and ability of each to live an independent life. In both the book and the film, the greatest emphasis is on the relationship between a middle-aged woman and her daughter, in the film, unlike the book, the mother and daughter have come to terms – Astra and her daughter Nora.
One of the film’s greatest successes is its casting, especially given its structure, which is set in three time periods with 12 years in between. Astra is embodied in the film by three different actresses (Madara Mazā, Elīna Vaska-Botere and Maija Doveika), her mother is played by two actresses (Inga Tropa and Indra Briķe), and Nora is played by Rūta Kronberg. The visual similarity of the actresses is undeniable, especially Madara Mazā and Elīna Vaska-Boter, who play Astra in her childhood and student years, are extremely similar. I especially want to highlight the work of Zane Bierande, who has been assigned the role of Jesse. Jesse identifies as a woman, but is treated as an outsider by Soviet society and the health care system due to her intergender identity, Jesse has been ostracized a lot in life, but becomes an angelic savior and patient helper in Astra’s life.
The emotional weight of the film rests to the greatest extent on the shoulders of Maia Doveik, who is entrusted to portray Astra at a time when she both finally gets the opportunity to develop herself as a professional, traveling to St. Petersburg (or Leningrad) for an internship, and loses this opportunity when, according to the management, she is ” crossed all borders” and is expelled from St. Petersburg, from the center of science. Doveik copes with the rendering of this difficult stage really brilliantly. Her Astra is a woman whose pain and loss of future opportunities, as well as the role of a mother, which Astra finds very difficult to accept, drive her into an ever-increasing spiral of self-destruction. In the film, we often see Astra with a cigarette, consuming a lot of alcohol, adding medical ampoules of unclear content to coffee and taking various pills – her stupor takes on clear and sharp outlines in the film. Astra’s desperate desire to escape the Soviet-era reality that oppresses her results in a deliberately chosen fog of consciousness, and like many children of addicts, Nora has to grow up faster than she should in order to take care of her mother. After Astra moves to the countryside to work in a rural clinic, the only place where she can find work, Nora has to take care not only of maintaining the house, but also of her mother, for whom she cooks, wakes up, sometimes even washes Astra, and does all of this with the child’s belief that it will be better if she tries harder.
“Mother’s Milk” gives an insight into a world where men have no place. Astra’s chosen field of medicine, gynecology, is a harsh world of women with very few exceptions, and Astra’s research and practical experiments in artificial insemination seem dangerous to the Soviet regime because they allow Astra to enter a world where the security structures embodied by the men in the film cannot keep up. The division of gender roles appears several times in the film, including the comical yet poignant scene in which little Nora escapes from the Chekist in a country school. He questions her about Astra, and when asked what she tells Nora at home that she doesn’t teach at school, Nora says that her mother tells her how babies are born. This is really not comfortable for the Chekist, he doesn’t want to know about what processes take place in the woman’s body, and he leaves Nora alone, as long as she doesn’t tell too much. Gynecology in “Mother’s milk” is a women’s world, which means both that children are women’s business and women’s responsibility, and that there are no fathers in the film (the only father figure is Astra’s stepfather Andrejs, the second husband of the older sister), and that it is an industry where you can rebel against the existing power, which Astra is doing in St. Petersburg, experimenting with artificial insemination.
Publicity photo (Jāņas Deinat).
Watching the film makes you wonder how the Soviet-era environment still feels so familiar, largely because trains are an essential element in the film. I really hope that soon it will be much more difficult for filmmakers to imitate Soviet times, because at some point we will get new trains and a new humane railway station that meets the requirements of modern life. “Mother’s Milk” talks about how the Soviet political system limits people’s choices and breaks their lives, but the restrictions are no longer just abstract or intangible, they are also found in the urban environment. It’s the cold doctor who refuses to get into the reasons why Astra can’t accept her daughter, it’s the cold school where humanity and diversity have no place and where Nora is forced to drink milk even if it makes her physically sick. In this world, there are few rays of light and the same rare ones (Teacher Bloom, Jesse) the Soviet regime tries to cover up and break. The ending of the film, although tragic, is full of hope – despite the traumas and broken destinies of generations, the future is brighter than the past.
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