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Grbavica review
:. Director: Jasmila Zbanic
:. Starring: Mirjana Karanovic, Luna Mijovic
:. Running Time: 1:47
:. Year: 2006
:. Country: Bosnia
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Grbavica opens with a gathering of women. They are seated on a floor, bodies resting against one another and eyes closed; nearby, a restful song is sung. The camera drifts from one individual to another, pausing ever-so gently on each; they are tired faces at peace, tragic pasts temporarily broken. This is their therapy; known collectively as the Center, this is where women come to alleviate their lingering pain and, once a week, collect aid from the government. When the camera breaks its fluid stride, it finds a middle-aged woman named Esma (Mirjana Karanovic), who lives with her teenage daughter Sara (Luna Mijovic) in Grbavica, a Sarajevo neighborhood. She is frequent visitor to the Center, but only on days when aid is given; she has never opened up to the other women, never attempted to mend her own soul, and she refuses to cry.
Only a few years prior, war ravaged the country; the women of Sarajevo lost friends and family, and they live now without income. Esma's close friends work at a factory that produces women's shoes-inapt objects that contrast hauntingly with the city's dire history-while she lives on money from the state, eventually getting a job as a nightclub waitress. There, a co-worker dresses in tight, sparse clothing and dances with drunken men for large tips; at the same time her boss (Bogden Diklic) makes extra revenue through gambling, while his two associates conspire against him.
One of these associates, a tall and compassionate man in black named Pelda (Leon Lucev), recognizes Esma from Postmortem Identification-he was searching for his father, she was searching for her husband. Their dire trials in postwar isolation bond them but create a dissonance between Esma and Sara, who's befriended a gun-toting boy from school named Samir (Kenan Catic). Both ostensible outcasts, Sara and Samir share their own bond-they are the children of shaheed men. But on the eve of a class trip, when Sara asks her mother for proof in the form of a certificate, the story of Sara's father begins to unravel. For years Esma has been carrying a dark secret about Sara, one that threatens to destroy their small family.
Grbavica is built on the tension of secrets. We know that Esma is hiding something from her daughter, and that she survived the war with visible and hidden wounds, but everything remains concealed until the final ten minutes. Still, Zbanic's screenplay feels too restrained, too limited. Once Esma reveals the secret to her daughter, the film has nowhere else to go. There's no space offered for divergence or deliberation, only enough for the unavoidable story ahead. And while the film's full English title, Grbavica: The Land of My Dreams, may seem heartening and optimistic, it is, in truth, heavy with sarcasm. Besides the final, fleeting moment, there isn't a single scene that depicts Grbavica as either beautiful or thriving. It's a city that, much like Esma, has its own wounds-damage which may never be healed.
Still, the film's lack of movement is redeemed by its performances, most notably that of Mirjana Karanovic. As Esma, she is a brittle apparition-a spirit made of cracked glass who could easily be shattered. In one scene she is shown moving awkwardly through the nightclub, a tray of drinks raised in one hand, when she lays eyes on her co-worker being groped by an inebriated soldier on the dance-floor. He is licking alcohol off her chest while running his hands over her body, and though the moment devastates Esma, the woman doesn't refuse his drunken advances; this is her profession, her present and, perhaps, only option for survival. The scene is a testament to Karanovic's talents, as she stands staggered in the midst of a thriving club, her eyes speaking volumes. And when she's finally given the chance to shine near the film's end in two incredibly heartbreaking scenes of disclosure, she radiates.
Adam Balz
 Movie Reviews: from 1998 to 2011
New Film Reviews since 2012
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