Murina review – smouldering intensity, fragile manhood and young beauty

There’s quite a bit about emotional stress and teenage craving and the semi-official sexiness of swimming costumes on this assured directorial debut from Croatian film-maker Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic, though I puzzled about some fantastically shot seen cliches.

Julija (Gracija Filipovic) is the teenage daughter of Ante (Leon Lucev), an aggressively insecure man whom she has to help, diving underwater with him whereas he makes a dwelling on the rocky Adriatic shoreline spear-fishing moray eels (the “murina” of the title). She is pretty close to her mum Nela (Danica Curcic) nonetheless in every other case unhappily proud and self-contained. Her father is jittery with pleasure because of his outdated pal Javi (Cliff Curtis) is coming to go to: a super-rich alpha male who may be inquisitive about searching for just a few of Ante’s land to point out right into a trip resort. It’s one factor of an open secret that Javi was as quickly as in love with Nela and may be nonetheless, and he’s moreover quite a bit taken with Julija’s youthful magnificence.

Ante realises at some acutely conscious diploma that adroitly defending these feelings alive could help shut the deal, but it surely absolutely’s a dangerous recreation, and his private fragile patriarchal manhood is at stake. As for Javi, does he pretty realise that the land Ante is trying to advertise him is on the island of Kornat, which locals ponder blighted by the real-life tragedy of 2007 when 12 firefighters misplaced their lives there trying to position out a blaze?

All that's acted with smouldering depth and authenticity, considerably by Filipovic, although it’s attainable to marvel if there’s one thing shocking to return throughout the third act, or if we're in a position to roughly guess the place it’s all heading. And likewise … dreamy-hallucinatory underwater sequences throughout the movies have gotten over-familiar. At any value, there are some very persuasive performances, and great cinematography by Hélène Louvart.