What does it mean to be human? Folk tales have been trying to answer this question long before the movies, but when the two come together with as much felicity as in You Won’t Be Alone (Nebudes sama), it is a potent brew. Bringing a sophisticated, modern eye to a gruesome Balkan folk tale in the vein of the Brothers Grimm, young Australian-Macedonian filmmaker Goran Stolevski makes his feature debut with a big splash of blood and a handful of gore, in a horror film that is getting noticed at major festivals.
Readable on multiple levels – horror story, Freudian psychodrama, feminist allegory, coming of ager – it is a woman-centered tale whose darkness is uplifted by its underlying poetry, brought out in luscious cinematography and free-wheeling camerawork, and in the intense performances of an excellent female cast that includes Noomi Rapace, Anamaria Marinca and Sara Klimoska. The story of blood-thirsty witches who can transform themselves into any creature they disembowel is not for the faint of heart, and it is significant that at its Karlovy Vary press screening there were mostly women left in the audience when the lights came up.
The very first scene, set in a peasant hovel where a mother (Rapace) is being driven to distraction by her crying newborn daughter, gets the story going with a shiver and a bang. A shockingly disfigured old crony (Marinca), her face a wavy red surface of rippled scars topped by a few hairs, suddenly appears hovering over the baby. The terrified mother recognizes her as a legendary ancient spirit known as Old Maid Maria (also Wolf-Eateress) who robs the cradle for infant’s blood. To postpone this horror, the mother makes a pact sealed in blood that she will raise the child Nevena until she’s 16, then the witch can have her.
Rapace’s hysterical attempt to protect her daughter by hiding her in a deep cave is predictably met with failure, and one wonders if she has really gone mad trying to control a young woman’s freedom. Nevena, played by Sara Klimoska (a discovery in Milcho Manchevski’s beautiful peasant-mother tale Willow) is now a feral 16-year-old who is barely able to speak in words, but whose senses are razor-sharp as she tries to make sense of her limited world. One day, in the first of many scenes of supernatural transformation, Rapace’s “whisperer-mother” turns into Marinca the “witch-mother”, but exactly how she does this Stolevski saves for later.
When Nevena follows the witch out of the cave under a dazzling sun-filled sky, the camera spins over Klimoska’s dirty face, and her wide eyes express her astonishing discovery of the world beyond the cave and its shadows, while an internal dialogue gives voice to her amazement. This inner voice will follow her throughout her adventures in the film, and gradually becomes more articulate as Nevena learns what it means to be a human being.
The fearsome witch has other plans for her. The first thing she does is slash the girl’s chest with her long claws and spit blood on her, instantly and irrevocably transforming her into a witch with immense shape-shifting powers. The girl, used to being mistreated by her whisperer-mother, takes it calmly. Now she refers to herself as “the witch-me”. But the ancient spirit is not satisfied with her new “daughter” and, turning herself into a wolf, she abandons the girl in an unfamiliar world.
The rest of the film traces Nevena’s many metamorphoses as she discovers she has the ability to turn into any dead animal or person by ripping open her chest and stuffing it with their entrails. Leaving the audience to deal with the horror of the process, the screenplay takes the girl through a series of female forms (and, unexpectedly, even one male body) in which she learns about the violence and abuse men mete out to their wives, the pain of childbirth, the joy of childhood and the ecstasy of sexual union. All happiness is fleeting, often curtailed by her witch-mother, and she describes the agonizing “burning and breaking” of being human, but always concludes with her litany of woes with the reflection, “and yet… and yet…”
Romanian actress Anamaria Marinca (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days) is a frightful female presence in her full-body horror make-up, but even scarier is a late flashback to the physical horror she herself has undergone as a new bride at the hands of the superstitious villagers. Notable also is Alice Englert in the role of Biliana, one of Nevena’s final incarnations, who learns firsthand that marriage is a seesaw of joy and sorrow.
Just as Stolevski takes pains to describe the simple social life of these rough farmers who beat their wives and harvest wheat with scythes, D.P. Matthew Chuang brings a soul-stirring beauty and otherworldliness to the timeless setting of peasant huts dominated by unspoiled nature, seconded by Aussie composer Mark Bradshaw’s (Bright Star) inspired score.
Director, screenplay: Goran Stolevski
Cast: Noomi Rapace, Anamaria Marinca, Alice Englert, Carloto Cotta, Félix Maritaud, Sara Klimoska
Producers: Kristina Ceyton, Samantha Jennings
Cinematography: Matthew Chuang
Editing: Luca Cappelli
Production design: Bethany Ryan
Music: Mark Bradshaw
Sound: Emma Bortignon
Production companies: Causeway Films in association with Balkanic Media, YWBA Productions
World Sales: Bankside Films
Venue: KVIFF Film Festival (Special Screenings)
In Macedonian
109 minutes
