Murina review – masterfully tense and sun-kissed psychological drama

Digital cinematography has a habit of making images look harder and colder than their analogue film counterparts. In becoming de rigeur for filmmakers, it has changed the overall “feel” of many a feature. Certainly, it appears harder than ever to authentically capture the feel of a sun-kissed beachside paradise. Murina, set on a stretch of the Croatian coast, seems deliberately shot to accentuate the coldness of digital cinematography, oppressing and chilling the characters. It’s fitting for such an ambiguous, claustrophobic story.

Teenager Julija (Gracija Filipović) is whiling away the summer at the seaside, while her sailor dad Ante (Leon Lučev, a regular mainstay of Balkan filmmaking) hopes to sell his land to his multimillionaire friend Javier (Cliff Curtis) in order to move his family to the capital of Zagreb and provide a better education for his daughter. Smouldering beneath the surface is the fact that Javier once proposed to Julija’s mother, Nela (Danica Ćurčić), and Julija, sensing that prior history, finds herself drawn to Javier’s mystery and riches. Though Ante is oblivious to all this, he keenly understands the challenge to his masculine authority and responds with psychological abuse and increasingly arrogant demands of his daughter.

First-time director Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović keeps the focus on Julija and her torn state-of-mind. We see men constantly eyeing her up, commenting on her tight swimsuits. She seems to appreciate the attention, but is as yet unsure as to what it means or how to respond to it. Javier continually complements her, suggesting she could get into Harvard, and it's clear that her infatuation with him is also to do with what he represents – freedom, money, power. And throughout, it's made clear that there’s something malicious about Javier, even if it remains unspoken.

In Murina's background, and mirroring Julija’s own unsure sense of self, lies the greed and property speculation of the Croatian coast that, in the last ten years or so, has risen to absurd levels. As tourism has become the country’s primary economic bedrock, overdevelopment has posed challenges for local populations. Some have lived on the Croatian islands for generations, with nothing like the infrastructure or resources of the major cities, and now find themselves sitting on land that’s suddenly worth millions. The promise of selling and building a more comfortable life elsewhere is set against the fact that such development is gradually destroying much of the heritage of the coast: the decision that’s best for the individual is not necessarily best for the collective.

The inability to make the right decision is reflected in the individual stories: Julija's teenage daydreaming about a better life is set against her parents’ more pragmatic – if not necessarily more sensible – hopes. But there’s nothing moral about the point-of-view that Murina takes. Kusijanović maintains a masterful knife-edge of ambiguity and tension for the film's entire runtime, using the oppressive blues of the sea to mirror Julija's own uncertain sense of self and superb ensemble performances to build towards an excoriating conclusion that’s cathartic without being anything close to conclusive. A really confident and complex debut.

Murina is in UK cinemas from 8 April.