Summary
Sofia’s soot-choked alleys exhale the corpse of a minor civil servant, leaving his teenage daughter Liliana clutching nothing but a school satchel and the sour stench of unpaid rent. A lecherous ex-boss—grey-flannel respectability stretched over a vulture’s skeleton—trades bread for her hymen, then trades her reputation for silence. Expelled, she slips from desk to gutter, from gutter to brothel, from brothel to the chilled marble of artists’ studios where tuberculosis blooms like violet bruises across her lungs. One winter dusk she meets Kamen: sun-browned hay-sweet shoulders, a peasant prince in braided wool, posing for painters who want folklore not truth. Love arrives as abruptly as a slammed gate: he carries her to his mountain village, where larks stitch the sky and gossip stitches the churchyard. Convalescence tastes of goat-milk and plum-brandy; Liliana’s cheeks refill, her laugh returns, the past seems a frayed postcard. But the village girls sniff sin on her skin like wolves round a bleeding doe; whispers curdle into ostracism, a dance-floor brawl hurls her back into fever, and within weeks she is a corpse in hemp linen. Kamen, deranged by loss, stalks the moonlit ridges until her spectre—white shift, black sockets, the hiss of undead accusation—lures him over a cliff. Two fresh graves lie foot-to-foot: the clerk’s daughter and the farmer’s son, a miniature Calvary erected against Bulgaria’s indifferent skyline.
Synopsis
Liliana's father, a petty clerk in Sofia, dies. His sixteen year old daughter, still in high school, is left without any means. Her father's former chief, an old bachelor, begins to look after her. He takes advantage of the situation and sleeps with Liliana. She is expelled from school and become a prostitute. The girl is taken ill but continues work as an artist's model in different studios. In one of them she meets Kamen. He comes from a wealthy peasant family. in town he poses for artists dressed in a national costume. Kamen falls in love with Liliana. Soon after he visits her at home. He learns that she is seriously ill. The girl lives in a wretched poverty. Liliana tells him the story of her life. Kamen offers to take her to the village where the fresh air will her to recuperate. She agrees. Kamen and Liliana are already married. In the beginning his mother is rather cool towards the girl but little by little her trust is won. Work in the open, peaceful life and Kamen's love help Liliana to recover completely. Hapiness does not last long. Learning of her past the young women of the village begin to shun her. After a row during a village dance Liliana comes home crying. She falls ill and dies soon. Kamen is inconsolable. He is haunted by Lliana's ghost which is rumored to roam as a vampire. Kamen visits Liliana's grave every day. Once when her ghost appears, he follows it. Urged on by the phantom Kamen falls from a high rock and is killed.
Review Excerpt
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There is a moment—halfway through Liliana—when the camera lingers on a cracked icon of the Virgin, candle-smoke bruising the silver foil. The shot lasts maybe four seconds, yet it detonates the entire film: Bulgaria itself is that ruptured Madonna, maternal only in myth, treacherous in practice.
A City That Swallows Virgins
Sofia, 1981, shot in wintry 16-mm grain, resembles a Soviet satellite that forgot to orbit: trams screech like gutted boars, bureaucrats chew sunflower seeds in echoing h..."
