Slow (2023)
Directed by Marija Kavtaradze
Starring Greta Grinevičiūtė, Kestutis Cicenas, Laima Akstinaite
Premiere: 2024-01-19
Punctuation: * * *
In the opening sequence of Slow, Eva leans in and presses a kiss on a young man, asking him to utter three small words that would seal the moment. He smiles, moves closer, and continues the embrace, while she finally voices the confession, though his certainty wavers. Soon afterward, Eva encounters Dovydas, a man who makes his living translating for the deaf and hard of hearing, someone who hears the room more than most. Eva enrolls in a dance class where the instructors and students are deaf and mute. Dovydas translates her words, guiding the back-and-forth of their budding connection. The tension between gaze and response intensifies as they grow closer, each step watched with careful restraint. He appears cautious, perhaps overly so, as if the space between them is a terrain to be navigated with precision.
As their bond deepens, Eva discloses an essential truth about her desires: she identifies as asexual, lacking sexual attraction toward others. This revelation reshapes their relationship, introducing a quiet unease about how affection, companionship, and longing can be felt when physical attraction is absent. Dovydas’s experience of desire contrasts with Eva’s orientation, yet both must negotiate a shared life that honors their differences. The film does not rush toward a conventional romance; instead, it lingers in the margins where longing, compatibility, and daily rituals intersect. It is as if the camera itself is patient, inviting viewers to observe the gradual evolution of trust, vulnerability, and mutual respect over time.
The core drama emerges not from a melodramatic clash of passion, but from the subtle negotiations within a relationship that refuses easy categorization. The narrative insists on patience, a deliberate pacing that mirrors the title’s promise. Kavtaradze constructs this connection piece by piece, allowing the couple to confront moments of doubt and miscommunication that emerge from the couple’s divergent needs and life experiences. The tension is never fully resolved; instead it shifts, offering balance through small, meaningful choices and shared moments that affirm care rather than conventional fulfillment. Eva’s straightforward honesty about her identity becomes a lens through which the viewer reevaluates what it means to love someone, to be intimate, and to form a partnership without assuming a predefined script. The film thus becomes an intimate study of consent, desire, and the different ways two people can be present for one another when the world does not fit neatly into traditional romance tropes.
What stands out in Slow is Kavtaradze’s quiet faith in the ordinary—ordinary conversations, ordinary acts of kindness, ordinary risks taken together. The director’s restraint shows a trust in character over spectacle. The performances anchor the film, especially Grinevičiūtė’s portrayal of Eva, whose vulnerability and stubborn resilience shape every scene. Cicenas’s Dovydas embodies a careful tenderness, his body language and listening habits conveying a depth of feeling that is often communicated without words. The result is a nuanced, humane portrait of two people choosing to belong to each other within the limits of their own impulses and identities. The film’s atmosphere feels close and tactile, as if the audience could step into the space between a sentence and its meaning and feel the tension there. In this way Slow offers more than a story about a romance; it invites viewers to question how affection takes form in the absence of conventional desire and how commitment can be redefined through honesty, patience, and mutual respect.
Ultimately, Slow is a simple movie about a complex relationship. It seeks to illuminate how two people can navigate the delicate balance between attraction and intimacy when the latter is not anchored to a standard sexual script. The Lithuanian director Kierkegaard-like patience reveals itself in the slow, deliberate movements of the camera and the careful pacing of dialogue, letting the characters reveal themselves in their own time. The film suggests that love can exist as a steady, quiet ecosystem of trust, where desire is not the engine but a nuanced byproduct of care, communication, and shared commitments. In a world hungry for dramatic revelations, Slow quietly invites us to listen—to the silences, to the spaces between words, and to the truth that closeness can be found in listening as much as in speaking. A simple premise unfurls into an empathetic exploration of how two people learn to be with one another when their inner weather does not align with conventional expectations. The result is not just a romance but a compassionate meditation on human connection, acceptance, and the quiet strength of choosing to stay.