Things I'd Like To Do Instead of Thinking About Men (2019)

It took me ages to sit down and watch Irina Varina multi-part series THINGS I'd LIKE TO DO...… and it was a major mistake on my part because it is a fantastic one of a kind “film”.

For the record I fell in love with Varina‘s work after seeing her film US,FOREVER AGO at the Kew Garden Film festival in 2018. That film is an amazing film unstuck in time that gets under your skin and takes you some place else. It’s an absolute stunner. She is an artist with a one of a kind view of the world and with THINGS... she proves herself to be one of the most exciting filmmakers working today.

The series is a bit hard to describe. It has something to do with a woman who leaves her neighborhood and is talked about by her friends while we see videos she left behind detailing nominally what she would rather be doing rather than thinking about men. Where it goes is the trip you have to take.

Made up of six episodes running anywhere between four and six minutes they move like the wind telling its seemingly compartmentalized story. I was initially thrown off by what the film was doing since the sequences where Varina addresses us directly seem to be completely at odds with the sequences that wrap around them. I was a bit taken aback but the differences in how the two parts are presented, but as the second episode screened things began to click into place. There was this grand “ah ha!” when I understood what Varina was doing with how she was telling the story. The differing textures of the sequences no longer rubbed against each other but blended.

Wow.

I am not ashamed to say that I love the work that Varina is doing. She is turning out films that are not only haunting pieces of cinema but doing so in ways that are one of a kind and unique.

While I would be foolish to assume that THINGS I'D LIKE... will work for everyone, I think for anyone who wants to experience a unique cinematic talent is in for a treat. This is a series to track down.

Highly recommended.