DVD Zift

3 Star

Adapted from Vladislav Todorov’s novel of the same title, Zift is a stylish and idiosyncratic noir-esque thriller. Spanning a twenty-year period from the mid 1940s to the mid-60s, Zift is an enigmatically tragicomic, non-linear heist movie; think Snatch meets Micmacs, only shot in Bulgaria.

"Zift is a film of contrasts."

It’s Sofia in the mid-60s and petty thief Moth is serving jail time for a murder he didn’t commit. Having been imprisoned for some twenty years, Moth has spent his time playing the model inmate, as well as bulking up and honing his boxing skills under the stewardship of his mentor, fellow prisoner Van-Wurst – The Eye. As a reward for his good behaviour, Moth is offered an early parole, branded ‘reformed’ under the now-established communist regime.

Immediately upon his release, Moth is picked up by a pair of communist soldiers and bundled into the back of a car. The pair drag Moth back to an abandoned storeroom underneath the city’s bathhouse, where he is confronted by the malevolent Slug. Slug accompanied Moth and his young wife Ada on the ill-fated robbery that resulted in Moth’s incarceration, and convinced that Moth knows the whereabouts of a hugely valuable diamond, is now after his share of the spoils.

Rather than turn in his accomplices, Moth led the police to believe that he acted alone so as not to implicate the then pregnant Ada, and resultantly took the rap for the murder. Rather than appreciating Moth’s selflessness in preserving his freedom, Slug embarks on a toe-curling campaign of torture in an attempt to extract the information from the stubborn jailbird. Moth holds fast and is eventually able to make good his escape, although not before he has been subjected to the influence of a slow-acting but fatal poison.

His pell-mell escape takes him through the seedy underbelly of communist Sofia, encountering many grotesque and interesting characters along the way. Moth is thrown into a race against time; he must evade recapture at the hands of Slug, locate the missing diamond, and reunite with his wife before the poison reaches its grisly climax…

According to the film’s opening monologue, the word ‘zift’ can refer to both a piece of chewing bitumen and a slang term for faeces. How appropriate, then, that a film going by such a name should both delight and frustrate in almost equal measure? Zift is unapologetically a genre film, taking great pains to exhibit the stylistic and narrative traits of film noir, and yet it is also ludicrously unconventional. The film is at once a hard-boiled Guy Richie-esque gangster film and a stylish neo-noir in the Sin City vein, served up with a peculiar blend of silent-movie slapstick and cynical eastern European wisecracks. Far from being as irritating as this sounds, Zift is satisfying in an almost inexplicable way. The non-linear narrative moves at a steady pace and reveals an engaging plot acted out by a diverting cast of characters. The surreal way in which the film is executed ensures that Zift is cinematic in a very insular fashion; Gardev has created a wholly believable world of delights and grotesqueries – for ninety-two minutes it is yours to inhabit.

From a stylistic point of view, Zift truly shines.

From a stylistic point of view, Zift truly shines. The monochrome production coupled with an inventive use of camera and some snappy editing belies the film’s meagre budget, instead investing it with an energetic, polished look. The casting is good, too; at least in as far as appearances are concerned. Zahary Baharov’s Moth is a convincingly intimidating ex-con, and the actor brings a bemused attachment to the role that is truly befitting of the character. Tanya Ilieva makes for an equally beguiling femme fatale, as the somewhat predictably nicknamed ‘Mantis’, but her performance doesn’t quite live up to her appearance. In fact, many of the supporting cast members are forgettable, at best, leaving Baharov to carry the film practically single-handed.

Zift’s schizophrenic attributes carry over into the realms of narrative, too. The film is wonderfully anecdotal; every character Moth encounters has his or her own peculiar back-story or diverting piece of trivia to impart. The film is bursting with inventive digressions and vignettes, further solidifying the idea of Zift as a world apart from convention and the mundane. Unfortunately, the more attention is lavished on the incidental elements of Zift’s storyscape, the more the central plot of the film seems to suffer. The mystery of the diamond coupled with Moth’s aims and intentions are the fulcrums around which the rest of the film pivots, but both are unsatisfactorily explained and unnecessarily hard to follow. Moth explores options which he must surely know are blind alleys – when the film reaches its denouement, it doesn’t seem to quite make sense.

It is great to see such an art house take on the conventional heist movie; films like In Bruges have showed audiences that thrillers can be both funny and compelling simultaneously, but few have been as outright surreal as Zift. It is, however, in the use of one of film noir’s most oft-employed conventions that Zift falls most flat. The film depends upon the notion of the femme fatale; a figure that is traditionally strong, ruthless and independent. While it’s true that Ada is both strong and ruthless, she is portrayed most frequently as selfish, devious and sexually manipulative. It isn’t just Mantis, women are maligned throughout the film; if they’re not cackling suspiciously or scheming behind Moth’s back, they’re either completely naked or close to it. There is much to set Zift apart from the empty machismo of the Crank franchise and Guy Richie’s recent fare, but these tired stereotypes may yet tie the film to such unflattering comparisons.

Zift is a film of contrasts; at once accomplished and bungling, witty and infantile, progressive and degenerative. The film has much to commend it, but for every original idea, there is a cliché ready and waiting to undermine it.