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Review

Set in the sweeping plains of the Kazakh steppes, this charmingly sweet and gently funny story follows the shy Asa, a sailor returning home with duel goals of both finding a wife and becoming a sheepherder. Aided (and at times set back) by his brother-in-law, who refuses to give him a flock until he is betroved and his best buddy, a truck-driving, Russian rock- and porn-loving wild man. It's not easy for Asa —- there's only one girl, Tulpan, of his general age in the village -— and she, with dreams of living in the big city, rejects him. But rejection -- either by Tulpan or her scarily domineering mother -- fails to derail his persistent advances. The scene in a tent where Asa undergoes grilling by the girl's skeptical extended family is both familiar and quite funny especially when, in a major need of image building, he boasts of fighting off octopi while at sea. In a land so far removed from ours, Tulpan both reveals the exotic locale of the countryside (and eye-opening scenes of a testy camel and the birth of a lamb) while offering a tenderly familiar look at the intensity and innocence of young love.

 -- Raymond Murray