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“With darker themes filtered through the turmoil of adolescence, Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic’s début feature mingles photo postcard imagery with scenes of fish being hacked to pieces, blood and guts part of the everyday order of life.” easy creature, content to scavenge in which it can. It’s sought for its flesh, taken into consideration a delicacy in components of the Mediterranean, however the spear fishers who pursue it do properly to be cautious: it has an uncongenial bite.
“You’re risky,” Javier (Cliff Curtis) says to Julija (Gracija Filipovic), and he or she’s a lot more thrilled than whilst people inform her that she’s stunning.
He’s an vintage pal of her father (Leon Luvec), though people now and again marvel how two such specific guys come to recognise every other. Living overseas, he’s a rich man, but he has visited sometimes over the years; now that Julija has reached a positive age she starts offevolved to suspect that it’s because he is in love along with her mother (Danica Curcic). This time around, her father desires to sell him some land, so all people is pretending to like every person else in that manner which adults are right at but which makes teens feel ill comfortable. She returns the favour via wandering round in swimsuits which may appearance unremarkable on the common female but which, given her aggregate of robust swimmer’s muscle and complete curves, make her a serious distraction.
“Put some garments on!” her father shouts. Her mom, usually equipped to placate him however also, in this situation, seeming jealous, drapes her in a shapeless floral frock. Unable to specific her full self, sexuality and all, she will become an object for other human beings to challenge onto and tease. During a dance, he father spanks her playfully, possessively, and he or she flees to a corner of the room. It echoes an in advance moment when they’re swimming collectively and he or she’s trapped, in short, towards the rock face wherein an ell is hiding, her father’s frame covering hers. There’s a deep sadness in her. Life on this place could be perfect if he have been now not a part of it. Sometimes she thinks about that down inside the water, whilst she has a spear in her hand.
Julija doesn’t like killing. Despite her father’s boasts, she doesn’t even like searching eels. She imagines how one-of-a-kind her existence could be if she had been Javier’s daughter, and once in a while Javier plays alongside, feeding her desires of training and opportunity. Her mother tells her that it’s just a fable, that he’ll forget about approximately them as soon as he boards his plane to depart once more, however Julija pins all her hopes on him taking her away.
With darker topics filtered through the turmoil of early life, Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic’s début function, which is loosely based totally on her 2017 brief Into The Blue, mingles photo postcard imagery with scenes of fish being hacked to pieces, blood and guts part of the daily order of lifestyles. Julija’s mom gazes wistfully at a red dress which her husband will not permit her to put on. Following Julija up flights of stairs or lingering on her as she lounges inside the solar, the digicam suggests us what different humans see once they examine her, however it additionally suggests us her sturdiness. Gracija Filipovic brings a sullen forcefulness to the central role, a physicality which goes way past just being eye-catching. Some of Julija’s behaviour may be youthful insurrection for its very own sake, but she additionally has more potent reasons, and while there is no-one left to initiate, when she has handiest herself to reckon with, she is as brave and as imaginative as the eel.
Murina is released in cinemas throughout the UK on 8 April, with Q&A screenings with the director this weekend, details right here.
