{"id":113550,"date":"2022-07-08T20:42:43","date_gmt":"2022-07-08T15:12:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/centralrecorder.com\/a-croatian-teen-struggles-in-coming-of-age-drama\/"},"modified":"2022-07-08T20:44:05","modified_gmt":"2022-07-08T15:14:05","slug":"a-teen-from-croatia-is-trying-to-escape-from-coming-of-age-drama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/centralrecorder.com\/a-teen-from-croatia-is-trying-to-escape-from-coming-of-age-drama\/","title":{"rendered":"A Teen from Croatia is Trying to Escape From Coming-of-Age Drama"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The last few weeks in the United States have lent resonance to a current in international films that\u2019s been growing over the past couple of years \u2013 stories of young women trying to find places for themselves in environments that afford them little or no agency in their own lives. These films do not have anything to do with Roe v. Wade. They are inspired by the Cannes period drama. \u201cCorsage\u201dA royal woman is struggling under societal and physical constraints to watch the disturbing Costa Rican film \u201cClara Sola\u201d(which puts a mystical spin to the awakening female power) The movies can feel timely for viewers who see their boundaries shrinking.<\/p>\n

First-time Croatian director Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic\u2019s \u201cMurina,\u201d which won the Camera d\u2019Or as the best first film at Cannes in 2021 and comes to U.S. theaters in July, is a father-daughter conflict that plays in a shiny and upscale setting. In recent years, young female directors from the Balkan states have made a string of impressive films haunted by the wars that consumed that region in the 1990s \u2014 among them, Blerta Zeqiri\u2019s \u201cThe Marriage,\u201d Antoneta Kastrati\u2019s \u201cZana\u201d and Jasmila Zbanic\u2019s \u201cQuo Vadis, Aida?\u201d \u2014 but Kusijanovi stays away from the reverberations of those conflicts; she\u2019s more concerned with the wars within the family.<\/p>\n

Julija (Gracija Filipovic) is a teenage girl who lives on an idyllic coastline where her father (Leon Lucev) owns land that he\u2019s hoping to sell to Javier (Cliff Curtis), a wealthy former employer and sometime friend. If Javier buys the land, it\u2019ll be the big score that allows the family to move to Zagreb \u2013 but any potential stumble could be catastrophic. Her father is a domineer and Julija is under immense stress due to the imminent sale. Nela Curcic, Julija’s mother, barks orders at Julija; mom follows his lead and makes excuses.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\u2018Clara<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cHe needs this,\u201d Nela says. \u201cIf he gets this deal, he\u2019ll be calmer.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf he gets money, he\u2019ll be\u00a0worse<\/em>,\u201dJulija says that her father has a constant look of sullen irritation on his face, which seems completely justified.<\/p>\n

Julija finds the urban Javier to be Julija’s dad: open-minded, encouraging her to leave her life of restriction, supportive and not dismissive. It isn\u2019t that simple, of course, and every character has his or her turn to be the guilty party in this round-robin warfare that can get exhausting and repetitive.<\/p>\n

But \u201cMurina\u201d also gives Filipovic room to shine as Julija, and it uses the blue ocean and sun-dappled shores to paint a vivid picture of a troubled paradise, with a lot of help from the dreamy compositions of cinematographer H\u00e9l\u00e8ne Louvart.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Female<\/p><\/div>\n

The film also gives its heroine a pair of dramatic signposts on her travels \u2014 the opening one-shot from beneath the surface of the ocean looking up toward the sky, the final one-shot from far above looking down at the surface. Do the sea offers Julija an escape? Or is it a nice distraction until she returns to her darker life on land? Kusijanovic isn\u2019t interested in tipping her hand as this coming-of-age story turns into one more cinematic journey by a young woman through an inhospitable world.<\/p>\n

\u201cMurina\u201dKino Lorber is opening its doors in New York and Los Angeles on 7\/7.<\/em><\/p>\n

This review was taken from an article that ran on \u201cMurina\u201dThe film premiered at Cannes in July 2021.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The last few weeks in the United States have lent resonance to a current in international films that\u2019s been growing over the past couple of years \u2013 stories of young women trying to find places for themselves in environments that afford them little or no agency in their own lives. These films do not have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":113551,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[101,3,105,106],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/centralrecorder.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/1657293166_A-Croatian-Teen-Struggles-in-Coming-of-Age-Drama.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/centralrecorder.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113550"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/centralrecorder.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/centralrecorder.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centralrecorder.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centralrecorder.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113550"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/centralrecorder.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113550\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":113552,"href":"https:\/\/centralrecorder.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113550\/revisions\/113552"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centralrecorder.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/centralrecorder.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centralrecorder.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centralrecorder.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}