Celestial Wives features 23 vignettes about the various women of the Meadow Mari, which, according to the festival summary, is “a Finno-Ugric ethnic group in western Russia.” There’s no overarching narrative to Celestial Wives. Each vignette is about one woman, each woman’s name begins with the letter “o,” and each one has to deal with their sexuality in a unique way. Allegedly, these vignettes are inspired by pagan folklore, but the film is still enjoyable as a magical realist portrait of a specific society. Even if you don’t know anything about Mari folkore.
In the strangest vignette, a giantess casts a hex on a woman who refuses to let the giantess sleep with her husband. The hex? A bird living in her genitals. In the least strange vignette, a group of old women eat a hunk of paté. The level of “magical realism” varies from one vignette to the next, but each story contains a infectious sense of play that transcends its cultural specificity. Technically a feature, Celestial Wives is really a series of shorts connected by theme — that femininity is more than a target of objectification.
Celestial Wives of the Meadow Mari screens publicly at 7:00pm on Wednesday, September 11 at the TIFF Bell Lightbox. It also screens at 9:15pm on Thursday, September 12 at the Lightbox and at 9:30am on Saturday, September 14 at the Scotiabank Theatre.
____
Alan Jones writes about film for Toronto Standard. You can follow him on Twitter at @alanjonesxxxv.
For more, follow us on Twitter @TorontoStandard and subscribe to our newsletter.
