Nima (Tandin Bihda) doesn’t know precisely what she’s searching for at first of “I, the Track,” which is unusual contemplating that she’s trying to find somebody who appears precisely like her. The varsity instructor desires to clear her good identify after a racy video has surfaced with a lady who bears a resemblance so sturdy that the varsity’s administrator has positioned her on depart. Nonetheless, with on a regular basis on the earth to seek out her doppelganger in Dechen Roder’s intriguing but intermittently partaking drama, Nima’s seek for a stranger she involves determine as Meto (additionally performed by Bihda) reveals how her personal life has seemingly gotten away from her.
Bhutan’s choice for the worldwide function Oscar, “I, the Track” supplies a showcase for the pure great thing about the nation when Nima’s travels take her from the capital metropolis of Thimpu to the border city of Gelephu. However extra provocatively, Roder wanders off the overwhelmed path for a special view of a tradition the place private contentment has lengthy been a degree of nationwide satisfaction (with surveys used to calculate the Gross Nationwide Happiness index).
Even earlier than Nima is beckoned to the principal’s workplace to seek out out she’s misplaced her job, there’s a sense of disillusionment. Nima appears adrift when she’s caught with an excessively possessive boyfriend who isn’t totally satisfied it isn’t her within the video regardless of her insistence. In the meantime, her mom reminds Nima of extra industrious years she spent overseas. As unlucky as it’s to be mistaken for the topic of a viral intercourse video, the pursuit of the particular person actually in it offers her a renewed sense of goal.
That refined, savvy sense of irony runs all through “I, the Track” and turns into a part of its allure when Nima begins to return alive because it appears more and more possible that she’s chasing a ghost. Even with the identical actress taking part in them, Nima and Meto aren’t precisely envisioned as two sides of the identical coin, however they share a restlessness. The latter, as remembered by others, had a vitality that Nima begins to envy when it’s clear that, despite main a life that was not all that rather more attention-grabbing, Meto at the very least had ardour. The radiant amber gentle wherein Meto is bathed throughout scenes of her exploits a number of years prior turns into a stark distinction to the cool blue world that Nima inhabits within the current. Roder impressively levels scenes the place the 2 dwell side-by-side in numerous timelines, and a slight digital camera pan exhibits how shut Nima will get to feeling what Meto did whereas nonetheless acknowledging the space between them.
The delicate aesthetics could make the narrative really feel a little bit too fundamental by comparability when the movie primarily hangs on the connection that types between Nima and Tandin (Jimmy Wangyal Tshering), a musician who principally performs to an empty bar that she meets early in retracing Meto’s footsteps. Showing to know greater than he’s prepared to let on about his ex’s whereabouts, Tandin turns into a recurring presence in Nima’s investigation, providing some musical interludes if not a lot else. Not solely can he frustrate Nima, however he exemplifies Roder’s occasional tendency to mistake a scarcity of characterization for mystique when he retains drawing Nima again regardless of having little to say. A burgeoning romance isn’t totally convincing, but the truth that he takes up as a lot display time as he does successfully displays the actual property that the widely mediocre males in each Nima and Meto’s lives occupy within the girls’s minds, stopping them from reaching their full potential, both from struggling their outright condescension or out of concern for a way they’ll be perceived in the event that they have been to say themselves in the identical method.
A vaguely episodic construction which may have in any other case appeared uninspired takes on a sure poignance when Nima is pushed forward by studying about one scenario after one other that Meto left behind as soon as they now not suited her, seemingly giving herself the permission to do the identical in her personal life. Though that self-realization is timeless, Roder cannily positions it to talk to modern instances. Nima’s downfall from a viral video might solely occur in the course of the digital age.
A go to to a village to see Meto’s grandmother, too blind to acknowledge the distinction between Nima and her personal blood, results in a plea to the younger girl earlier than her to reclaim a folks music from town that stole it from her when she believes she’s been corrupted by modernity. Typically “I, The Track” is a bit too quiet to resonate, nevertheless it lays naked the echoes of the previous in methods which can be tough to shake.
