Preceded by short: Rabbit on the Moon (Australia, Monica Pellizzari, 1988, 20 mins, 16mm), a fairytale about an Italian girl growing up in suburban Australia in the early seventies. (Golden Gate Award, SFIFF '89) This was the best film at Venice. The (Soviet-) Georgian helmer whose last pic Favorites of the Moon was the toast of Venice '84, once more scatters a 'structureless' series of images and anecdotes across the screen. It is silent cinema with incidental sounds (dogs barking, bells tolling, psalms chanting, scraps of semi-audible conversation). Five white-robed monks hew out their days of prayer and devotion, punctuated with farm-working, wine-making, meals, and walks through the town scored for ciaos and buon giornos... The Conspiracy of Consumption, satirized as a minuet of whirling sub-plots in Favorites of the Moon, here embraces everyone from monks to meat-hackers to Lords of the Manor. But nothing is overtly condemned by the movie. Iosseliani lets the images speak for themselves. The simplicity may be disingenuous-we know what the...director is up to; as in Favorites he's knocking the consumerist West. But he does it with the geniality of a child pretending complete innocence. Harlan Kennedy, Film Comment