When the dreamer is a landlocked nation, the dream of the sea has a greater significance. It’s not just an idle fantasy of beach holidays and salt-rimmed cocktails — though Vera (Teuta Ajdini Jegeni) would like that too — but as Kaltrina Krasniqi’s taut, sorrowful narrative feature debut “Vera Dreams of the Sea”It is clear that the vision of a wide blue expanse reaching out to a far-off horizon can be tacitly political for a widow suddenly feeling the weight of Kosovan patriarchy upon her already heavy shoulders.
Under the high-tension whines and see-sawing violins of Petrit Çeku and Genc Salihu’s sinister, interior-monologue score, we’re introduced to Vera, a middle-aged interpreter for the deaf. Vera is wonderfully and fearlessly embodied in a great Jegeni. It is remarkable that so few films feature a woman of this social and life stage as their heroine. This elegant, compact movie is edited by Vladimir Pavlovski and Krasniqi with a dreamlike, yet calm, bias. It’s Vera’s individual reserves of resilience that allow her dormant independence to tentatively blossom, making this nuanced, nervy story as much a character portrait as it is a social critique.
It’s been a while since Vera has had to tap into those resources. We can see this in the opening shot, which shows her calm face overlaid by an image of a gentle sparkling ocean. Vera is a sign-language translator who lives in a nice apartment in Pristina. But while she can rightly consider herself self-made — the kind of well-liked woman whom shopkeekers trust to pay later if she’s caught short at the store — it’s perhaps also true that she has never really considered how much her marriage to Fatmir (Xhevat Qorraj), a respected retired judge, not to mention the capital city’s relatively progressive urban environment, have shielded her from the most biting excesses of Kosovan patriarchy.
Rural villages are still managed by de facto councils made up of menfolk. Their handshake deals, wink-nudge gambling debts, and handshakes have more weight than the rule of law. In one such village, Fatmir and Vera have a small house which they have been trying for years — she more than he, it is implied — to sell. Vera learns that the highway will soon be built near her house, and she is able to buy it. She tells Fatmir this as a birthday gift and chats happily about how they can purchase an apartment for Sara (Alketa Sylaj), their struggling actress daughter. Sara is a single mother with a complicated relationship with Father. She doesn’t seem to notice Fatmir’s stonefaced reaction, and so has no inkling of his state of mind when in her brief absence while she pops down to the shops, Fatmir smokes a final cigarette and kills himself. Vera is shown attempting to enter through a bathroom door that Fatmir had collapsed against, but the impact of the shock is subliminally conveyed.
Doruntina Basha’s sturdy, unsentimental screenplay never overwrites. Instead Krasniqi puts us into Vera’s point of view with scarcely a word: Vera polishing her dead husband’s shoes; Vera showing up to work despite her colleagues’ concerns; Vera, stoically listening to Fatmir’s cousin Ahmet (Astrit Kabashi), delivering flowery protestations of grief. Vera finally finds her voice when Ahmet comes back to claim that the village house belongs to him. And the men of the village, who know some unsavory, potentially ruinous truths about Fatmir, support Ahmet’s claim, and close ranks against her like a rural Kosovan mafia.
DP Sevdije Kastrati’s photography alternates between coolly composed wides and warm closeups, but is always fixated on Vera, sometimes at one with, sometimes at odds with her surroundings. But as crisply as the lines are drawn between the grand, inexorable forces of tradition meeting modernity and conservatism facing down progress, Vera can still surprise us, maneuvering an advantage — like the showdown she smartly engineers to take place in a deaf cafe — even with odds stacked against her.
Blerta Basholli’s Sundance hit “Hive”Many of the same problems are addressed, however. “Vera”This is undoubtedly the most captivating title. Both, however, represent a new generation of female filmmakers from Europe’s youngest country, who are wise beyond their nation’s years in understanding that although empowerment comes with no guarantee of happiness — indeed it opens up the probability of endless struggle — it is better than contented, complacent ignorance. You have to be asleep in order to dream.