‘Murina’ Film Review: A Croatian Teen Struggles in Coming-of-Age Drama

The previous few weeks in the USA have lent resonance to a present in worldwide movies that’s been rising over the previous couple of years – tales of younger ladies looking for locations for themselves in environments that afford them little or no company in their very own lives. The movies don’t have anything to do with Roe v. Wade, however from the current Cannes interval drama “Corsage” (a royal girl chafing below bodily and societal constraints) to the unsettling Costa Rican movie “Clara Sola” (which places a mystical spin on the awakening of feminine energy) the films can really feel well timed to viewers that see their very own boundaries narrowing.

First-time Croatian director Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic’s “Murina,” which gained the Digital camera d’Or as one of the best first movie at Cannes in 2021 and involves U.S. theaters in July, is a father-daughter battle that performs in a shiny and upscale setting. Lately, younger feminine administrators from the Balkan states have made a string of spectacular movies haunted by the wars that consumed that area within the Nineties — amongst them, Blerta Zeqiri’s “The Marriage,” Antoneta Kastrati’s “Zana” and Jasmila Zbanic’s “Quo Vadis, Aida?” — however Kusijanovi stays away from the reverberations of these conflicts; she’s extra involved with the wars inside the household.

Julija (Gracija Filipovic) is a teenage lady who lives on an idyllic shoreline the place her father (Leon Lucev) owns land that he’s hoping to promote to Javier (Cliff Curtis), a rich former employer and someday pal. If Javier buys the land, it’ll be the large rating that enables the household to maneuver to Zagreb – however any potential stumble may very well be catastrophic. Domineering and below great stress because the potential sale approaches, her father barks orders at Julija and her mom, Nela (Danica Curcic); mother goes alongside and makes excuses for his habits.

“He wants this,” Nela says. “If he will get this deal, he’ll be calmer.”

“If he will get cash, he’ll be worse,” says Julija, who wears a perpetual look of sullen annoyance that appears fully warranted each time her father opens his mouth.

In that setting, the urbane Javier appears to Julija to be the whole lot her dad just isn’t: open-minded, encouraging of her needs to go away her constricted life, supportive quite than dismissive. It isn’t that straightforward, after all, and each character has his or her flip to be the responsible get together on this round-robin warfare that may get exhausting and repetitive.

However “Murina” additionally provides Filipovic room to shine as Julija, and it makes use of the blue ocean and sun-dappled shores to color a vivid image of a troubled paradise, with a number of assist from the dreamy compositions of cinematographer Hélène Louvart.

The movie additionally provides its heroine a pair of dramatic signposts on her travels — the opening one-shot from beneath the floor of the ocean trying up towards the sky, the ultimate one-shot from far above trying down on the floor. Does the ocean supply Julija escape, or just a fairly distraction earlier than she inevitably returns to a darker life on shore? Kusijanovic isn’t concerned with tipping her hand as this coming-of-age story turns into yet another cinematic journey by a younger girl via an inhospitable world.

“Murina” is opening in New York on July 8 and in Los Angeles on July 14 from Kino Lorber.

This evaluate was tailored from a chunk that ran on “Murina” when the movie premiered in Cannes in July 2021.