Promised Spaces

Nature, in the form of torrential rainfall, plant life and chirping insects, both melds and pushes back against the built urban environment in Ivan Markovic’s Promised Spaces, a gorgeously atmospheric and immersive portrait of a high-end real estate project still under construction in Cambodia. The reality of the workers, who sleep clandestinely in the concrete shells of the large structures they are building but will never be able to afford, is set against the alienation of one of the gated complex’s first residents, whose apartment, with its artificial climate, feels decidedly less utopian than the advertising and renderings that drew her to sign up for it, sight unseen.

The film, which had its world premiere in the ACID lineup at Cannes and now screens in the InFocus section at the Sarajevo Film Festival, is the debut feature of Berlin-based Serbian director Ivan Markovic, already a sought-after name on the festival circuit for his splendid cinematography on films by Angela Schanelec, Dane Komljen, Ivan Salatic and others. Its slender and static observational format will challenge all but the most arthouse tastes, but the sensorial aliveness and sensitivity to both the found beauty of cityscapes and the inequalities at play in our globalised moment mean it will find ardent fans in less commercial festival niches.

Oasis Park has been planned as a haven where urban living meets nature, but its dysfunctional air-conditioning systems and concrete skeleton seem less in harmony with the wind and lush greenery than they are brazen impositions. And the immaculate near future promised by the slick slogans and modern design that adorn the mammoth, draped tarpaulins that have been installed to drum up anticipation and sales are starkly at odds with the poverty of those hunkered under them, warming themselves by fires or curled on mattresses in the night heat.

As one would expect of a Markovic film, the cinematography (in conjunction, here, with Katharina Hauke), is exquisite, with an eye for the spatial and sensory dimensions of this place, and the way in which power is inscribed upon bodies, class-stratified by walls and capital’s rules of labour and access. Long, static shots take in the scale of this aspirational project, where a seemingly optimised citizenry can be slotted in behind identical lit windows. The camera takes in the gleam of sweat on bodies in the dark of night. It’s almost too hot to sleep, and the monsoon season’s humidity seems to infuse the screen, in a sultry, mesmeric film sparse on dialogue and narrative action but true to the limited social mobility and stuckness of its inhabitants.

The film pulses out from two incidents, which are mere snatches or moments in time, rather than fleshed-out happenings. One involves Seda (Vita Vong), a prim, isolated member of a moneyed overclass, who is shown around her newly acquired apartment by real estate agent Jorani (Lyer Von). The appointment is frosty, as wall stains and other marks of wear-and-tear in the former showroom space leave Seda feeling duped — a disappointment that deepens when she calls the customer service line about the air-conditioning system and is left interminably on hold. The other sees sleepless construction worker Sokun (Vollak Kong) leave his sweltering dormitory and join a group of fellow labourers living at one of the many unfinished tower blocks.

In other hands, the sliver-thin storyline and almost conceptual set-up might seem cold and distancing, but there is a powerful emotional charge here, in facial expressions and weather changes, and a poetic, textured resonance of charming details and repetitions, from the sales cry of “Fertilised duck eggs!” to a song about flowers in the sky sung with a piercing gaze to camera, right into our eyes. This is ultimately an unobtrusive but beautiful work, which primes audiences for the art of paying attention to what is being built around us, and who is excluded in the process.

Director, Editor: Ivan Markovic
Writers: Ivan Markovic, Tanja Šljivar
Producers: Jelena Radenkovic, Jasmina Sijercic, Zsofi Lili Kovacs, Daniel Mattes
Cast: Vollak Kong, Chea Loch, Vita Vong, Lyer Von, Theara Or, Kanitha Tith
Cinematographers: Katharina Hauke, Ivan Markovic
Sound: Sum Sum Shen
Production companies: Bocalupo Films (France), Fiskultura Films (Germany), Big Time Production (Serbia), Anti-Archive (Cambodia)
Sales: Luminalia
Venue: Sarajevo (InFocus section)
In Khmer
76 minutes