Cliff Curtis and Gracija Filipovic in Murina.
Photograph: Antitalent
Coming-of-age movies set at seaside locales are virtually their very own subgenre by now, however hardly ever are they as intoxicatingly current as Murina. Croatian director Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović’s debut function (which received the Digital camera d’Or for Finest First Movie at Cannes final yr) plunges us into the thoughts of a teenage lady struggling to free herself from her domineering father, and it does so by immersing us within the fast bodily world surrounding her. Amongst different issues, it’s a film in regards to the lapping of waves on the shore, in regards to the roar of boat engines, about the best way the rocks and crags of the Dalmatian coast communicate to the uncontainable restlessness of youth.
After we first meet Julija (Gracija Filipović), she and her father Ante (Leon Lučev) are out spearfishing morays (“murina”). The brash, impatient Ante thinks nothing of bellowing orders and pushing his daughter out of the best way each time he thinks she’s doing one thing unsuitable. His aggression can manifest as boisterousness or ardour, and one can see how in small doses Ante may appear charming to outsiders. However for his household, dwelling with him is extra a reign of terror. Julija’s compliant, exhausted mom, Nela (Danica Curcic), desperately appears ahead to the few moments when Ante is perhaps in temper.
The daughter is the one doing the rising up right here, however there’s one thing basically infantile in regards to the father as effectively. As performed by the veteran Croatian actor Lučev, Ante has nervous, hungry eyes and a predatory grimace. He’s a patriarch who guidelines over nothing, substituting rage for energy – which successfully makes him a pathetic, overgrown toddler. This man views all the pieces as a dare: A reminder from his daughter that their boat as soon as bought destroyed when he tried to steer it between two giant rocks is a problem to try it once more. Ante may think about this delight, however to everybody else, it looks like juvenile boastfulness. We’ve all recognized folks like this, and one of many extra heartbreaking sides of Murina is the deep chasm between the best way Ante sees himself and the best way he’s seen by these closest to him.
The daddy’s perspective naturally places him on a crash course along with his daughter, who has simply begun to claim her independence. In sharp distinction to Lucev’s chatty, chest-thumping conceitedness, Filipovic maintains a quiet, intense deal with all the pieces round her — virtually like a captive ready for the proper likelihood to flee. And the lady finds a chance with the arrival of Javier (Cliff Curtis), a gazillionaire household pal visiting for the primary time in years, who comes with guarantees to assist Julija get into Harvard, the place he’s endowed a library.
Watching her mother and father with Javier, Julija glimpses paths not taken and lives left unlived. It’s clear that Javier was as soon as in love with Nela, and that his friendship with Ante has had its share of pressure through the years. Sensing this, Julija develops a more in-depth relationship with Javier (even referring to him as her father at one level) whereas additionally attempting to engineer a rekindling of his ardour for her mom. Within the lady’s thoughts, it shouldn’t take an excessive amount of effort to flee along with her mother and Javier to forge a brand new household, leaving Ante behind. It’s a baby’s absurd fancy, to make certain, however inside the heated immediacy of the film, it makes some twisted emotional sense. Kusijanović conveys all this by means of the best way her actors transfer in opposition to and have a look at each other. That’s filmmaking of the best order — intimate and gripping.
For his half, Ante has a half-baked plan about convincing Javier to purchase giant blocks of land to allow them to open a resort for Italian vacationers collectively — a resort the place Julija will, after all, must work ultimately. “Goals die in paradise,” the infinitely affected person Javier tells Ante, attempting to persuade him to let the lady go overseas to review. That line could possibly be the governing aesthetic of the movie. The settings of Murina are actually pretty, however Kusijanović avoids the siren name of the picturesque. The ocean is metal blue, the terrain arid and lunar; the panorama has been stripped of chance. Even the expertly-shot underwater sequences have a wierd, surreal desolation to them; solely these haunted, serpentine morays appear to exist on this barren blue world. (We see virtually no different fish.) The daughter’s goals can’t be contained by this spare shoreline, whereas the daddy’s goals have curdled right here into empty grandiosity. The entire place is suffocated of life. And but, one way or the other, the image itself is splendidly alive.
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