Mark Reviews Movies: MURINA

Murina, Kino Lorber

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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 7, 2022

Julija (Gracija Filipović), the 17-year-old protagonist of Murina, doesn't know what she wants for her life—just that it's not the life she currently has. From the outside, that life looks almost ideal: a home on the Croatian coast of the Adriatic Sea, a daily routine of doing what the young woman loves, and the promise of more and more of that for the foreseeable future. This is "paradise," according to those who live in this place and especially those who come to visit, but the problem with an allegedly perfect place is that there's no room, desire, or opportunity for any kind of change.

Obviously, Julija's life isn't perfect, beyond how static it is and almost certainly will remain. She lives with her father, the domineering and mercurial Ante (Leon Lučev, frighteningly pathetic), and mother, the seemingly passive—although showing clear signs of resentment—Nela (a thoughtfully pragmatic Danica Ćurčić).

Ante insists that his daughter goes fishing with him every day, diving for the elusive moray eels that give the film its title, but even the joy of diving might be taken from Julija soon. The father is hoping to sell some land to his wealthy friend Javier (Cliff Curtis, a charmer with just the right balance of hollowness and hunger), who's coming to visit his old friend after a falling-out years ago. If the sale happens, the family will move to an apartment in a city.

That's the basic setup of director Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović and Frank Graziano's screenplay, which follows Julija on an improvised plan to get Ante out of the picture, replace him with Javier, and, from there, have the kind of ideal life that everyone believes she already possesses. The uncertainty and naïveté of the protagonist and her plan are the point. She knows nothing of the world, other people, or how much could be available to her outside of her immediate surroundings. Julija does, though, know so much of the kind of man her father is, the trap of this "paradise," and the emptiness of her life to risk everything for some kind of change.

The film, then, is essentially a coming-of-age tale, as Javier starts telling Julija all of the possibilities that exist out there, while making encouraging—but, potentially, emptily polite—promises to her, and Nela tries to explain the reality of compromise—both in one's own expectations and in relationships—to her daughter. All the while, the father's behavior becomes more controlling and threatening, and against the gorgeous backdrops of the sea and its idyllic shores (The lushness of Hélène Louvart's cinematography serves as a picturesque juxtaposition for the human turmoil in the foreground), tensions escalate and occasionally explode.

Kusijanović's film is driven by desperation, with Filipović's performance excelling in its resolute stillness. That gives Murina a real sense of danger to go along with its insights about feeling trapped in a life of only promises of disappointment and fear.

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