Before Since Otar Left… begins, its central characters have already undergone a remarkable journey: They've left the world that made them, without moving an inch. Three generations of women—ninetysomething Esther Gorintin, her middle-aged daughter Nino Khomasuridze, and her lively, twentyish granddaughter Dinara Drukarova—all share a tiny, rundown flat in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia. Wandering through the capital city of Tbilisi, they seem to recognize that they live in a land of broken promises, where the architecture of the past mocks the paucity of the present. Mass emigration has turned their city into a virtual ghost town.
Like many households around them, theirs has accidentally become a matriarchy. Gorintin's son, the titular Otar, has left to seek work in France, a move made partly due to his mother's lifelong Francophilism, but mostly out of economic need. A doctor by trade, he sends word of promising job leads, but soft-sells the fact that they involve working construction. Meanwhile, there's a shortage of men in Tbilisi, Georgia no longer being the kind of place where fortunes get made. Those who remain might be good for a spin in the back of a car, but aren't worth long-term plans. For Khomasuridze, this means making the best of what's still around. For Drukarova, it means, barring some drastic decision, resigning herself to living with her mother.
Gorintin has an explanation for their lot: The world has gone to hell since her beloved Stalin held the reigns. (Atrocities? She claims she has proof they never happened.) Given her tenuous grasp on reality, it's little wonder that Khomasuridze and Drukarova decide not to tell her when Otar dies. Instead, they opt to compose pretty letters about his life in Paris. If life is hard enough for them to take straight, how must it be for Gorintin in her fragile state?
Making her feature debut, one-time Bertrand Tavernier and Krzysztof Kieslowski assistant director Julie Bertucelli spends part of the film letting her characters worry whether they've made the right choice, but mostly contents herself with capturing a place where hard choices have become unavoidable. Though her decision to pace the film to Gorintin's old-lady rhythms sometimes kills the dramatic momentum, in the end it's time well spent—particularly in the film's final moments, when it becomes apparent that sometimes people whose world has left them behind have no choice but to return the favor.