Content warning – This review refers to scenes depicting sexual assault
Coralie Fargeat’s Revenge and Emerald Fennell’s Promising Young Women both made audiences sit up and take note. These rape-revenge films – such a grossly titled sub-genre – repositioned the way victims were seen. They had agency. They had anger. They had an arsenal. Writer / director Olga Korotko’s Crickets, It’s Your Turn, is a far more subdued affair by comparison to the aforementioned films. And it’s also curiously short on the revenge front, too.
Merey (Inzhu Abeu) is an aspiring photographer, who meets the boyishly charming Nurlan (Ayan Batyrbek), whilst he is en route to a party. After one date, he invites her to a birthday weekend for his friend, Bahyt (Arnur Kusaingazin), at a cabin in the countryside. On arrival, we see portraits of Donald Trump and Elon Musk on the wall. More than this, Bahyt has invited three sex workers along for the weekend, exposing his – and the rest of the friendship group’s – odious attitudes towards women.
This is a film that does take a little while to get into. Not least because there are cutaways to what appears to be pieces of avant-garde theatre, which are later explained to be Merey’s kind of daydreams whenever she sees or hears something harmful or shocking. (Mercifully, Korotko opts for a daydream cutaway in place of Merey’s assault.) The dialogue also feels a little stilted whilst characters are being established. Most of the men are boorish and misogynistic, but Merey is set up to be quirky and aloof, which doesn’t quite land. Sergey (Alexandr Khvan), who tries it on with Merey early in the film, feels like an absolute non-threat, which means he’s not perhaps seen as the villain he should be.
That aside, once the film does find its rhythm, Korotko uses her camera with an intensity that makes the walls of the remote cabin appear to close in around Merey and the pack of animals she effectively finds herself with. Several times, the camera pans from one male gaze to the next, in rapid succession. It feels uncomfortably intimate; slimy. She bonds with the sex workers, encouraging them to leave the cabin, sealing her fate with the furious Bahyt.
The performances are good and very credible – Inzhu Abeu is strong and resourceful when she needs to be whilst also perfecting an emotionally damaged stare. Arnur Kusaingazin embodies smug and sleazy. The biggest surprise is Ayan Batyrbek, whose boyband good looks belie attitudes that aren’t all that different from his circle of friends. These three actors, in particular, will keep you engaged throughout.
Korotko does well to build moments of tension. With Merey having escaped on foot, the men decide on the story they will stick to before pursuing her through the woods. There are flesh-wounds, near misses and outright assaults that add layers of threat to the situation. Most disappointing in all of this is Nurlan’s reaction to his girlfriend’s assault. “You didn’t resist, did you?” he asks her, before rightfully receiving a wooden beam to the forehead.
But it’s perhaps the lack of violence that marks Crickets out from other rape-revenge films. Although Merey is literally fighting for her life, there’s a distinct lack of bloodshed. Instead, she is somehow coaxed by Nurlan into handing over her weapon and, therefore, her agency. She is nothing more than a nuisance to these men; a story of a birthday weekend gone wrong; something to silence and ignore. There are no lessons learned, depriving both Merey and the viewing audience of any sense of justice or satisfaction. Perhaps it’s a commentary on how rape cases are, unfortunately, handled in reality but it feels more than a little deflating.
Crickets, It’s Your Turn is an interesting film that will definitely make you feel repulsed, fearful and exasperated. It’s the first piece of Kazakhstani cinema that this reviewer has ever watched and it’s excellent to see another female writer / director tackling the taboo subjects that no one else will.
Crickets, It’s Your Turn is up for the Audience Award at the Glasgow Film Festival. Get your tickets here.
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