‘Murina’: Film Review

Because the beautiful Murina opens, a blue expanse of water fills the body like a painterly abstraction. Two divers drift into view, otherworldly of their masks and flippers and seemingly united of their spear-fishing mission. As soon as they’re again within the daylight, although, their moray-eel prey dying in a pail between them on the boat, the person and his 17-year-old daughter will not be in concord. They may even be mortal enemies.

With an distinctive quartet of lead actors and a potent immersion within the Croatian island locale — you possibly can virtually odor the salt air and sea — Murina attracts the viewer straight into its emotional undertow. Director Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic and her co-writer, Frank Graziano, have constructed a taut story bristling with unease, and one that appears head-on at battle. The daddy-daughter energy battle between Ante (Leon Lučev) and Julija (Gracija Filipović) is correct on the floor from the get-go.

These tensions are heightened when Ante readies for the arrival of “God on Earth,” as he refers to Javier (Cliff Curtis), the outdated pal and former employer he hopes will purchase his land so as to construct a resort. There’s a determined edge to his preparations for a dinner to welcome the enterprise magnate, and Julija seethes at Ante’s each barked command. Her onetime beauty-queen mom, Nela (Danica Čurčić), who beneath her serene veneer trembles with girlish pleasure over the upcoming festivities, advises persistence. “We’ll be capable to transfer to Zagreb,” Nela tells her daughter, holding out the promise of a big-city escape from their isolation. The windfall of a cope with Javier, she believes, will calm Ante; Julija sees solely the understanding that his monstrousness will develop.

As clean and low-key as Ante is frantic and grandiose, Javier arrives on a launch from his supersized yacht with a sprawling entourage. The dashing topic of journal covers (“The Ruthless Icon,” one headline blares), he carries himself with the worldly, subdued confidence of a real alpha, however isn’t above a passive-aggressive dig or two to place Ante in his place. The ambivalent nature of the 2 males’s friendship is difficult by the onetime romantic connection between Javier and Nela, a spark that Julija encourages at the same time as she flirts with him herself.

In numerous methods, Javier turns into a determine of potential rescue for Julija in addition to Ante. Together with his encouraging discuss of Harvard and life past the island, he begins to seem like a savior to the inexperienced teen. A short scene wherein the visiting tycoon and the younger girl stroll throughout a rocky stretch of island remembers Antonioni’s L’Avventura. It’s a flickering allusion, however an affecting one. Kusijanovic has made a movie of plain-spoken poetry, rooted within the bodily world relatively than in a free-floating temper of existential despair, however the cinematic reference underscores the sensation of looming catastrophe in Murina, simply because the judiciously used music by Evgueni and Sacha Galperine pulses with foreboding in addition to a way of thriller and marvel within the watery depths.

The water is Julija’s aspect, and she or he strikes between land and sea so regularly that she’s typically clad in only a bathing go well with — “bare,” in accordance with a few judgmental adults clinging to old-school notions. Watching the revelers, just a few years her senior, on a yacht docked close by, Julija sees the promise of freedom and intercourse, prospects that develop particularly charged as her story turns into considered one of an imprisoned princess in a distant stone home.

Kusijanovic’s lifelong familiarity with the Croatian island setting informs each facet of the movie, as do Filipović’s talents as an expert swimmer, significantly within the film’s gut-churning climax and a scene that extends past the closing credit. Capturing the ocean’s sensuousness and hazard, the land’s desolation, and the characters’ intense interaction, the camerawork is astute. Zoran Mikinčić-Budin handles the underwater cinematography, whereas ace DP Hélène Louvart provides one other indelible story about feminine expertise to her credit, after such current gems as The Misplaced Daughter, By no means Hardly ever Generally At all times and Invisible Life.

Murina is a notable debut for a gifted director, its profile enhanced by the involvement of Martin Scorsese as an government producer and the Digicam d’Or trophy for finest first characteristic at Cannes in 2021. The simple dialogue is a key power of Kusijanović and Frank Graziano’s screenplay. In a narrative this nicely advised and acted, there’s great energy when individuals say what they imply.

The pointed remark of a minor character close to the start of the movie may, in lesser palms, lie flat: an apparent assertion of theme. However right here it’s alive with the untold tales of generations of girls, and a tantalizing trace of the struggles to return in Julija’s conflict with Ante. As they put together for the large dinner to welcome Javier, the older housekeeper who cleans the speared murina (moray eel) says, “Look how she bit her personal flesh to set herself free.” Freedom has its worth on this riveting drama, however because the characters fixate on life-changing what-ifs, troubled waters make approach for astounding realities.