Parade

The small absurdities of both institutions and families go on parade in Titas Laucius’s directorial feature debut. Migle (Rasa Samuolytė) is used to taking the lead, not just as the conductor of the school’s orchestra but also in the home she shares with her second husband Ignas (Valentin Novopolsky) and their teenage daughter Gabriele (Barbora Bareikyte), but all that is about to change.

Laucius shows his aptitude for situational humour from the start when, after a band room spot of ABH - an amusingly worked incident in its own right - mother and daughter hop into the car with Ignas and begin a philosophical debate on the rights and wrongs of violence to solve an issue. Beyond the back and forth, the humour of the scene chiefly comes from the fact that Ignas is using his car as a sort of Uber-style taxi service, meaning that an unsuspecting passenger is also treated to this full exchange.

As Gabriele threatens to quit the orchestra in favour of taking up capoeira - a real problem given that the band is shortly due to play a key gig - Migle also finds herself caught up in the bizarre bureaucracy of Catholicism after her ex-husband Eimantas (Giedrius Savickas) asks her to help him annul their first marriage in the eyes of the Vatican so that he can marry his new fiancee in church.

Although increasingly feeling like two short films that are not always successfully spliced together, there’s no shortage of laughs in either half of Laucius’ comedy. In ways that are reminiscent of Federico Veiroj’s The Apostate, the writer/director shows how contracts with the Catholic Church are more easily entered into than escaped from. Laucius doesn’t use the church as a whipping boy, however, instead generating the humour from the characters, as Migle and Eimantas find themselves raking over the embers of their relationship, while going to increasingly devious lengths to convince the church they didn’t marry properly in the first place, leading to what one clergyman describes as “a penalty shootout at the Vatican”.

Laucius has a warm approach to comedy, allowing the humour to develop from the enjoyably messy ins and outs of the situations the characters find themselves in, while finding a sweetness in the pang of nostalgia that comes from the rekindled connection between Migle and Eimantas without overblowing it. You can feel the love he has for even the smallest characters, with each adding to the detailed fabric of a film that marches along with such vigour that you’ll find it hard not to fall in step with its upbeat tone.