When life gives you lemons, make lemonade, the sunny proverb goes.
But what if life gives you inedibly sour quinces instead? The father-son odd-couple road trip comedy gets an appealingly deadpan, Bulgarian makeover in Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov’s third feature, a film that takes the bittersweet fruits of its funny, sad, silly situations, and eventually, after many a comical false start, makes jam.Not all filmmakers can say they’ve carved out a distinctive niche for themselves after just three features, but the Bulgarian writing-producing-directing duo are among the few who can.
So while “The Father” occupies a lighter, gentler register than jet-black fables “The Lesson” and “Glory,” it shows the same affinity for screw-tightening stories of fundamentally decent people caught in an escalating series of thankless dilemmas, through no malicious intent of their own.
In the Grozeva/Valchanov Cinematic Universe, no good deed goes unpunished, but this
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