This is yet another film that I'd heard good things about and where I more or less knew the whole story, so big surprises were unlikely. The Otar of the title is the beloved son of a Georgian (that Georgia as part of old Russia, not the deep South of the USA) matriarch who has been working illegally in Paris for the last few years. The highlights of her existence, to say nothing of her daughter and grand-daughter who live with her, are his letters (occasionally with a little bit of money) and his phone calls. When the younger two women receive word of Otar's death in an accident on a building site, they can not bring themselves to break the older woman's heart and create the deception that he is still alive by faking letters from him. The interplay amongst these three generations of women with their own hang-ups and needs is the nub of the film. One just knows that the deception will eventually collapse, especially when the old woman sells her precious library to fund a trip to Paris for the three of them, to again see Otar before she dies. How she discovers the truth and deals with it, protecting her daughter and grand-daughter is the unexpected turn, as is the final leap to freedom by the youngest of the trio.
All three actresses were fine, but particular praise must go to Esther Gorintin who was playing a seventy-something, but was actually ninety when this film was shot. The stubborness mixed with the resilience of age shone from her every word and movement and made what might have been a very "little" film something somewhat more special.
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