When we spoke to Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović about her feature directorial debut during its run at Cannes last year, she told us, “It was important for me to portray both the [evolution] and the constraints we experience while growing into ourselves — that is ‘Murina’ for me. It is the path of birthing yourself. It is going through the storm, and through deep underwater tunnels.” The film, which went on to win Cannes’ Camera d’Or award, is a contemporary fairy tale following a frustrated young woman as she slowly realizes she has to be her own knight in shining armor.
Teenaged Julija (Gracija Filipovic) lives with her family on a secluded island off Croatia’s Adriatic coast. She spends most of her time diving for eel, or murina, with her domineering father Ante (Leon Lucev), and avoiding his verbal and physical abuse with the help of her mother Nela (Danica Curcic). At best, Nela’s gentle, soothing demeanor defuses tension among the family; at worst, it enables her husband and implicitly victim-blames her daughter.
Julija, understandably, wants to get the hell out of Dodge. However, having no viable means of escape, she resigns herself to enviously watching rich kids her age partying on a yacht and goofing around at the beach. Then, with the arrival of the wealthy businessman Javier (Cliff Curtis), Ante’s former boss and Nela’s ex, Julija sees an opportunity to finally live the life she’s dreamt about.
Javier is visiting to discuss a possible business deal with Ante — he’s considering buying the family’s land to develop it as a resort — yet uses the bulk of his trip to engage in head games. Charismatic and worldly, he openly flirts with Nela, oscillates between flirting with Julija and acting as a father figure, and gets into weird masculinity tug-of-wars with Ante. Basically, Javier is lukewarm about the potential resort but very enthusiastic about fucking with the family. Ante, in turn, feels disrespected and takes it out on his family, namely his daughter. (Case in point: Julija dresses up to impress Javier. Ante tells her she has “boy’s shoulders.”) Of course, it takes a minute for Julija to recognize that this is what’s happening; at first, all she cares about is that a rich dude is taking an (apparent) interest in her future, and getting away from her ogre dad.
Going into “Murina,” I expected it to be a spiritual successor to “An Education,” “Fish Tank,” or the more recent “Slalom,” compelling stories about bright-yet-naive teen girls whose eyes are opened — for better and for worse — by older, more experienced men. But this film, a thematic expansion of Kusijanović’s award-winning short “Into the Blue,” is really a portrait of a young person slowly coming to comprehend her own power, realizing that, despite everything, she has a light that can’t be snuffed out. I should’ve known that from the first sequence, from the way cinematographer Hélène Louvart (“The Lost Daughter”) filmed Julija diving with her father. Swimming deeper and deeper in her light cyan one-piece, spear in hand, she looks formidable. She’s no little voiceless mermaid, she’s a tough-as-nails murina who will do whatever it takes to survive.
All things considered, Julija’s journey is actually reminiscent of that of another fairy tale protagonist, “The Wizard of Oz’s” Dorothy. Despite wanting to flee her home, the polar opposite of Dorothy’s goal, Julija, too, discovers she doesn’t need anyone to save her. She had the ability to do that all along.
“Murina” is now in theaters. Kusijanović wrote the script with Frank Graziano.
