There are two sides to the eponymous protagonist in Mirjana Karanovic’s Mother Mara, and they’re both present in the film’s title.
Mara (Karanovic herself) is, at the film’s outset, a grieving mother. Her young adult son, Nemanja, has died and she finds herself the centre of attention at his funeral. Far from being a film solely about the processing of grief, or the pain of losing a child, Mother Mara looks to explore the individual behind the stereotype – to challenge perceptions both of middle-aged women, and more specifically mothers in a regional and more broadly cultural context. Adapted, in part, from Tanja Sljivar’s play We Are The Ones Our Parents Warned Us About, and anchored by Karanovic’s compelling performance, this feels like a film destined for festivals across the Balkans and beyond.
While there is a universality to the experience that Mara must go through in the film’s opening moments, it is steeped in the conventions of regional custom, where a mourning woman has a precise role to fulfil. Mara, on the other hand, is not one for wailing lamentation, instead allowing her eyes to betray the pain and shock being stowed beneath a downcast but unruffled veneer. This is just one of the tired notions that Karanovic’s script, written with Srdjan Koljevic and Maja Pelevic, seeks to expel. Not least of the others is the idea that a woman’s role in society is fulfilled at the end of motherhood. In this film, Mara’s voyage through her grief of losing her son is entwined with a surprisingly positive one in which she comes to define herself as an autonomous individual, perhaps for the first time.
It is hardly surprising that an actress of Karanovic’s stature is able to deliver a performance of such deftness and depth as this, but it is still a marvel to watch. Right from those early moments she paints a portrait of a woman guarded against emotion, even in the face of being shrilly told she must be cursed by her own mother – to have had her husband leave and now her son die. There is a flicker in Karanovic’s eye, but she maintains her composure.
As we learn more about this highly successful lawyer and beloved mother, we come to understand the requirements that might have led to this more buttoned-down and hard-edged persona, but both her grief and her true personality are bubbling under the surface. Karanovic gives fleeting glimpses – moments of heightened sensation, insights provided by the subtleties of performance rather than the labours of dialogue. Mara is a woman working through a multitude of things, pulling at the different strings of her own life and her son’s, trying to get to some uncertain centre.
Mara’s story sees her becoming involved with the 20-something personal trainer, Milan (Vucic Perovic), who comes to her office for help with a property dispute, claiming that Nemanja had told him that she would be able to help. Unable to refuse a friend of her son’s, Mara begins a professional relationship with Milan which, over the course of the film develops into something sexual – another element that sees Mara on a path of personal discovery that is tied to the way she is processing her grief. Indeed, it is possible that Milan’s youthful frankness might be just what Mara needs to dislodge the tears she is evidently so determined to keep from falling.
Karanovic’s filmmaking does a good job of echoing the eddies of Mara’s journey. For much of the time things are classically arranged, frames are as uncluttered and sharply composed as Mara’s glassy, minimalist home. Cinematographer Igor Marovic presents the protagonist and her setting in appropriately cool hues and the editing is slick and un-invasive. There are a few moments when things begin to unwind slightly – a recurring dream sequence in which Mara reckons with finding Namanja’s body, a trip to the night club he visited before he died, including a somewhat cathartic dancefloor sequence. These scenes don’t send Mara spiralling but further reinforce the inner life straining to get out. Mother Mara is all about the character letting go of someone else but also of finding her true self along the way.
Director, screenplay: Mirjana Karanovic
Cast: Mirjana Karanovic, Vucic Perovic, Boris Isakovic, Jasna Zalica
Producer: Snezana van Houwelingen
Screenplay: Mirjana Karanovic, Srdjan Koljevic, Maja Pelevic
Cinematography: Igor Marovic
Editing: Lazar Predojev
Sound: Julij Zornik
Music: Ephrem Luchinger
Production design: Dragana Bacovic
Production companies: This And That Productions (Serbia)
International Sales: Antipode
Venue: Sarajevo Film Festival (Competition Programme – Feature Film, out of competition)
In Serbian
101 minutes
