In this coming-of-age tale set off the rugged Croatian coast, a teenage girl strives to catch elusive eels, one of the movie’s hardworking metaphors.
The 17-year-old heroine of “Murina” never seems freer than when she’s swimming. Wearing a snorkeling mask, and with a spear gun in one hand, she glides through the water, her strong body propelling her forward. As she descends into the ethereal depths, expertly weaving among the undulating plants and scattering fish, her one-piece suit gleams like a beacon.
Julija (Gracija Filipovic), though, is rarely alone, even underwater, and “Murina” isn’t a story of freedom, but about the struggle to achieve it. Along with her parents, Julija lives on a starkly beautiful island off the coast of Croatia. It’s a hard, rugged, sun-blasted speck many hours from Zagreb, but it might as well be the moon. Other people live there, too, but few visitors drop by and then only briefly (you soon learn why). The other inhabitants are the region’s cawing, cooing, slithering animals, including the elusive moray eels Julija hunts.
The eels give the movie its title and, like the inviting, enveloping Adriatic Sea, one of its hardworking metaphors. Long, speckled and distinctly phallic, the animals dart in and out of dark holes in the reefs and craggy rock formations, inadvertently playing a losing game of hide-and-seek with predators like Julija and her gruff, domineering father, Ante (Leon Lučev). When they go fishing, she and her father seem perfectly as one, with coordinated cunning and skill, and hypnotically choreographed moves. Underwater there are few signs of the violent emotions that otherwise define their relationship, investing it with jagged tension.
A visually striking if overly diffuse tale of an unruly daughter, “Murina” takes place during a visit from an old family friend, Javier (Cliff Curtis). An entrepreneur, Javier arrives by yacht with open arms, a megawatt smile and a crowd of hangers-on. He’s visiting for pleasure and maybe for business; it’s not altogether clear. The writer-director Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic uses dialogue prudently, keeping exposition to a minimum and letting details trickle in through naturalistic conversations and in the feelings that tremble in every exchange. Why is everyone angry? Patriarchy? Teenagers? Take your pick.
Kusijanovic, making her feature directing debut, plots the family’s dynamic through a roundelay of gazes and with near-geometric precision. By the time Javier arrives, it’s evident that Ante and his daughter are furiously at odds — he yells, she sulks — and that Julija’s greatest, most sympathetic alliance is with her mother, Nela (Danica Curcic). A willowy, haunted beauty who looks far younger than Ante and could pass as Julija’s older sister, Nela serves as a bridge between her husband and daughter. Whether she’s a peacemaker or a collaborationist, a martyr or a patsy, remains one of the story’s provocative questions.
A silky, seductive flirt, Javier helps shatter the family’s fragile peace, largely through the promises — real or imagined — he embodies. Each family member has a stake in him. While Nela basks in his attention (and he in hers), Ante tries to negotiate a land deal with Javier that would allow the family to move. Julija greets their glamorous visitor warmly when he arrives, but as her father’s temper erupts into evermore violent rages — his desperation to make the deal fuels his ire, including at his daughter — she draws closer to Javier. Like one of the eels she fishes, she slithers around him, leaving you guessing about who here is the prey.
Kusijanovic sticks close to Julija, making canny use of the girl’s limited point of view. You see what she sees, how she looks at a world she doesn’t always understand and how she peers at a horizon that’s at once seductively open and impossibly out of reach. You’re Julija’s ally or that seems to be the idea, though Kusijanovic leans too heavily on your assumed sympathies, including for her young heroine. For the most part, the director cuts loose her characters and lets them and the story’s vague ideas — about gender, sexuality, money and power — swirl and drift, leaving you to decide how and whether they all fit together, or don’t.
Murina
Not rated. In Croatian and English, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes. In theaters.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
