I know that it is written somewhere in the top-secret handbook of film critics that you must give rave reviews to all foreign films no matter what, especially when that foreign film deals with a specific culture or practice that is scarcely touched upon (such as: goat herders inhabiting the steppes of Kazakhstan), filling some void in the cultural awareness of Americans via a limited-release foreign-language arthouse flick (and film critics love a good cultural-awareness-enhancing arthouse flick). And so I am aware that I just might be the only critic in the entire U-Ess-of-A who will openly say without hesitation that I did not like this movie, and I know this proclamation will draw gasps from the culture-fetishist arthouse types who feel that liking all foreign-language arthouse flicks, especially the ones about remote nomadic life, and calling the film things like “extraordinary” and “intoxicating,” is the hallmark of a distinctly cultured and intellectually superior person and to not agree means by direct proportion you are not as distinctly cultured and intellectually superior as those who clearly know better.

Yes, I am aware of this. All that being said, I still didn’t like this film.

Tulpan is the story of a young man named Asa (Askhat Kuchinchirekov) with dreams, big dreams. He was a naval officer and now he’s looking to get himself a nice little wifey and his very own flock of sheep to herd so he can have a nice little life on the steppes of Kazakhstan, and oh yes he’s going to be WAY more successful in this lifestyle than his poverty-stricken sister’s family, who are putting him up during his stay to fetch said wifey, because, you know, he’s got dreams. He doesn’t know a thing about sheep-herding and a live birth makes him gag, but still—he’s got dreams.

Our title character is the potential wife in question, who in turn has absolutely no interest in Asa nor in the fantasyland he concocts in which octopi are large enough to strangle a human and a man with no relevant knowledge can strike it rich living a nomad’s life. Bee-tea-double-u, we never actually see more than the back of the title character’s head. Which is fitting—that the film was named after its most elusive character—considering that the film itself is never quite sure what kind of film it actually wants to be; the name and its seemingly only tangential relationship to the storyline is representative of the film’s overall incohesiveness.

The film has no clear sense of theme or direction. Is it an ethnographic documentary? Is it a kind of love story (and only by the broadest stretch of the term)? Is it a coming-of-age tale, or a story exploring the delicate and often explosive nature of family? Well, it’s a little of each, and not really wholly any, which isn’t to say that a film cannot be more than one “thing”…it just doesn’t work here. Tulpan hints at weighty issues including but not limited to: poverty, a dying way of life, the importance of familial bonds, unrequited love, misguided ambition, the importance of self-discovery, and some other things. The ambling goofiness of Asa and his best friend Boni when juxtaposed with the much more serious and sincere issues that face sheepherders constantly on the brink of starvation simply do not mesh—the light-heartedness undermines the more serious tones and make them into a kind of joke, or at least make them seem, well, not all that serious.

It wants to be a love story, though it isn’t. Asa becomes hell-bent on pursuing the fickle Tulpan, despite her constant rejection, and who could blame her? The man courting her is whiny, annoying, and as Tulpan herself points out, has big ears. He is a wide-eyed dreamer convinced, much like arrogant youth can so often be, that he can follow the same path as his family but be so much the more successful for it. He is childish and naïve, lacking any sense of grounded reality. And in his worst moments, he is ungrateful, pig-headed, and insulting. I wouldn’t want to marry him either.

I realize that to draw such vivid characters as to evoke such a strong emotion from me, the viewer (in this case, extreme irritation) points to strong directing, dialogue, and acting. None of this is in question here. But how am I supposed to be rooting for this guy to win the heart of the modernly ambitious Tulpan when all I really want is for her to follow her dreams away from him and from the steppes of Kazakhstan? And did I mention that Asa is only “in love” with Tulpan because she happens to be the only available female around and his boss will not give him his own flock of sheep until he has a wife? Kind of sucks the romance out of it a little, doesn’t it?

But that’s only one element of the film. When it drops the goofy antics of Asa and Boni, the film drops Asa’s (and, by extension, Tulpan’s) storyline entirely, then focusing on the lives on Samal and Ondas, Asa’s sister and brother-in-law. In these moments, the film actually does become a quiet, tender portrayal of this vanishing nomadic way of life, displaying without over-sentimentalizing their constant struggle for survival and in the midst of all that, their strength and love as a family. But then it’s back to Asa and his asinine behavior, or long uncut shots of scenery characteristic of a geographic documentary, and the film gets jumbled once again.

Tulpan is the first feature film directed by Sergei Dvortsevoy (who shares writing credits with Gennadi Ostrovsky), whose previous films were small documentaries about small people with small ways of life. This feature is entirely in keeping with his repertoire; however, he hasn’t yet fully graduated from documentary to narrative, and Tulpan, like a newborn lamb unsure of its footing, is evidence of those first few shaky steps. Which isn’t to say he won’t get there—he just hasn’t yet.

In between subtle, simple, touching interactions between Samal, Ondas, and their children, Dvortsevoy intercuts lengthy, uncut shots of the desert, the windstorms, the sheep being herded…effectively halting the narrative flow each time. The film has no soundtrack but instead relies on the jarring, discordant sounds of a donkey braying incessantly, a high-pitched child’s voice singing off-key, and deafening windstorms to fill the soundtrack void during unnecessarily long scenes of a child running through the sands and clouds moving through the sky and wind blowing. Honestly this film could be watched entirely on fast-forward and would probably still be just as tedious, though it would be over twice as fast.

There is humor in the script, certainly, as there is also a certain amount of tenderness. Unknown actors essentially playing themselves give fine, understated, nuanced performances. Dvortsevoy’s filming style gives it a sense of documentary-like realism, but unfortunately, this is not a documentary but a narrative, and one that never quite fully gels. By the time Asa has his Big Awakening (which is the only point in time that the film falls prey to the romanticizing it constantly teeters on the edge of), I had entirely lost interest in him. While it would be easy to gush about the beauty, charm, realism, and cultural heritage present in the film, try not to get too caught up in the cinematography—which, in essence, seems to be the very mistake the director made.

Tulpan plays at the Detroit Film Theatre inside the DIA July 17th-26th. See website for ticket information and showtimes: www.dia.org/dft.