Like the moray eel it’s named for, Murina is sleek, agile, and hard to outmaneuver. This is a compelling film, but one of its core conceits is that satisfaction slips away from you, and in the end, I can’t help finding that, well, unsatisfying.
Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović’s debut feature is unpredictable in part because its genre is elusive. The setup is simple, and it could—and Kusijanović knows this—go in so many directions. Teenage Julija (Gracija Filipović) seethes in a claustrophobic paradise, straining at the limits of the Croatian island she calls home. This isn’t just ordinary seventeen-year-old restlessness, either. Her father, Ante (Leon Lučev) is a blustering bully, domineering and petulant in turns, forcing Julija and her mother, Nela (Danica Čurčić), to monitor his moods as closely as the weather. He makes them miserable. But an opportunity is on the horizon. If Ante can sell some remote land of theirs to Javier (Cliff Curtis), an old friend turned multimillionaire developer, then maybe the family can move to the city.
That’s all Nela wants: more opportunities, more neighbors, more chances to make life tolerable. (“If he gets this, he’ll be calmer,” she tries to reassure her daughter.) Julija, however, hasn’t learned to temper her dreams, and when the charming, charismatic Javier turns out to be Nela’s old flame, Julija begins plotting on a grander scale. Why should she settle for going to the mainland when she can go into Javier’s life, with its jet-setting and guaranteed Harvard admission? Why should she move when she can escape?
Filipović is a magnetic screen presence, and she makes all the right choices with her portrayal of Julija, especially how she plays her as controlled and coiled in her (familiar) unhappiness and giddy and reckless and young in her (unprecedented) hope. She’s on the cusp of adulthood but not quite there yet, and while that presents itself most clearly in her relationship with Javier—where she moves back and forth almost unconsciously between nascent flirtation and the simple longing for a better father—it also gradually becomes the heart of the film. The coming-of-age story is both the ultimate genre here and the way the story sheds its genre elements.
Because Murina keeps almost becoming a thriller, with its love triangles, psychological gamesmanship, simmering threats, and use of the isolation and danger of the sea bringing to mind films like Knife in the Water or its trashier cousin, Dead Calm. The possibility for violence and prurient sexual drama lurk around every corner. Adolescence is a Gothic time, and Julija has been leading a sun-drenched Gothic life: isolated and controlled, eavesdropping on local horror stories about burned men, getting locked in catacomb-like cellars she can escape only through perilous cave-diving. When she briefly gets away from her family and swims her way to a beach, there’s something surreal about seeing her surrounded by people her own age—and something even more surreal about seeing her surrounded by strangers. She’s drowning in family, in its obligations and toxicity. For just a second, she has people who don’t know her. She can invent herself.
That’s what she wants to do more than anything. She wants to escape Ante’s petty definitions of her—ridiculing her desire to join Harvard’s diving team, he sneers, “And you think they are waiting for you? They are not waiting for you. There are millions like you, millions better than you”—and his constant demands. She’s young enough to believe—to know—that this should be easy. Javier has loved her mother before, and he’s flirting with her like he loves her still, so that settles it, doesn’t it? She can see the opportunity for choices, but she can’t see the reasons those choices might be hard to make.
Nela can’t see anything but. Run away to start a new life with long-lost love Javier? “He forgets about us the minute he boards the plane,” she tells Julija. Javier is kind, and his affection seems real enough, but this is a nostalgic flirtation for him, a trip down memory lane. He’s not looking to change his life.
Julija carries the sheer, raw force of potential narrative with her. She could do anything—seduce Javier, kill her father—because she still thinks it could lead anywhere. The adults around her believe that the days will only go on, one after another and very much the same. They have more realistic expectations, in a way, but they’re also loyal to their own inertia.
The way Murina goes—what doesn’t happen—can feel like a cheat, like the tension has built up only for the film to shrug it off along with the last of Julija’s youth. For my own taste, I think I would have liked it better if Julija’s sense of limitlessness had infected the narrative a little more: drown somebody! Have an affair! Get off this fucking island! But I think it’s fair, and even interesting in its own right, for Julija’s loss of defiant innocence to be structural as well as textual. Rightly or wrongly, she learns to accept that a grand gesture isn’t coming. She learns to work with the limits of her world, to assert and defy even when she can’t overthrow. She chooses a gesture she can make on her own, one that she can survive.
It’s a good moment. It’s just too bad it feels like it should be the beginning of the movie instead of the end, because as final punctuation, it deflates as much as it encourages. Murina thinks that’s growing up, but I stand firm on this: you can have maturity and murder at the same time.
Murina is streaming on Paramount+, Kanopy, and Hoopla.
About the writer
Lauren James
Lauren James is a writer who wears many different hats (and pen names). She lives in Connecticut with her wife and two cats.
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Anthologized
A little slice of American folklore that feels like it's been here all along.
Streaming Shuffle
You make your royal bed, and you lie in it.
Anthologized
Alone in vast space and timeless infinity: one man in a ghost town.
Streaming Shuffle
A beautiful slice-of-life film that helped make a career.
Department of
Conversation
What did we watch?
Justified, Season One, Episode Two, “Riverbrook”
Prisoner transport is such a great procedural premise; murder works, but there’s realistically only ever a number of ways that can go (think of John Oliver’s classic line on NCIS, “How many ways are there to murder a marine?”). This episode already shows one ending you couldn’t really get on one of those shows: Raylan and the main guy, cheerfully discussing the results of the situation as he hauls him off to jail. We already get some great Leonardian plotting here, with the suspense scene of Raylamn walking right into Cooper and Price hiding out and immediately clocking what’s happened; Dupree’s sudden act of violence as soon as Cooper seems to have served his purpose; most subtly and more Leonardian, Price disappearing from the story as soon as he’s served his purpose.
One of the fundamental structural things about a Leonard story are those sudden acts of violence that come out of nowhere and force forward momentum. From a dramatic standpoint, Dupree shooting Cooper means the situation is fundamentally over – even if he did find the money, Cooper’s body would be found and Dupree would be on the run. The episode manages to spin this further into a theme that’s not just Leonardian and not even just Southern but straight up working class: a guy who has proven too clever by half.
Cooper’s scheme is complicated, which he has mistaken for smart; the three ways it goes wrong (the geography changes, the locals found the money, and his wife turns on him) are only three of the ways it could have gone wrong. Dupree follows this up with his own needlessly complicated scheme. This is what the world is to working class people; idiots reaching beyond their grasp for quick money and causing chaos that spills over into the working people.
Price capturing our attention right up til he’s served his purpose – to Cooper and to us – is classic Leonard, and part of why the Leonard worldview is so entertaining; it’s somewhat inspiring to have a guy who gives us a whole perspective for his short screentime, but it also makes the direction of the story harder to predict. Based on their first few scenes, who would you expect to be the protagonist we follow the whole episode – Cooper or Price? The first half of any Leonard story is us slowly figuring out what the fuck is going on; he skips over a lot of exposition by giving completely unrelated exposition. This extends out into the show capturing how conversations feel.
We also get the first signs that Raylan is kind of an asshole. Mostly it’s through consequence of things he did in the pilot; his asshole behaviour to his less manly romantic rival comes back on him almost immediately. But far more interesting is the first scene between him and Boyd; Boyd has taken meaning from surviving a gunshot wound, and Raylan has no idea what the fuck he’s talking about. Raylan doesn’t philosophise; he’s just a guy trying to get by and do good and he doesn’t want to fuck with the infinite, and the show can already see how this is a weakness. Boyd has accepted his path and his decisions; Raylan is conflicted and tries to ignore that.
This doesn’t mean he’s a bad person. I enjoy how he as a character carries a mostly-non-judgemental perspective; I can even recognise his weird mixture of contempt with a refusal to let that contempt get in the way of the self-expression of others, for a way he wouldn’t put it (“I don’t hold what you did against you.”). He’s doing his thing and you’ll do yours, and his thing is arresting you. I’m particularly struck by his question, “You understand how I see your people?” – 1) he judges others, 2) he doesn’t expect anyone to act upon his judgements, 3) he’s surprised when people don’t seem aware that others will judge them.
That last one is a thing that often puzzles me about other people. You think you can get through this life without at least one person thinking you’re an idiot?
Biggest Laugh: “You think they’re not cousins?” / “Maybe, maybe not, either way they’re banging.”
Top Ownage: Raylan shooting Dupree when the lights come back on.
There’s an early season Raylan line about how he once caught up with a fugitive at a concert, but he let her stay through the encore before he hauled her off to jail, and it feels like that captures him at his most characteristic best: a certain hardline level of purpose but also the flexibility to, with some detached amusement, go with people being people. Interestingly, I feel like he gets worse at the latter as he goes along, and it’s maybe partly because he’s stuck in a place he knows very well (and finds very frustrating).
Kojak, “A Long Way from Times Square” – The only witness to a mob murder is arrested in a small town in Nevada, and Kojak and Crocker go west. I think there was some rule on crime shows that you have to set at least one episode in a small corrupt town in the desert. High points include a bar brawl and a car chase that only fit in this setting; a tough as nails old lady named Lilly Weed (“don’t make any jokes because I’ve heard them all”), played by a character actress named Judith Lowry who was making a career of this kind of part; and Kojak and Stavros circumventing a noisy operator by speaking in Greek. Broadway legend Judy Kaye shows up a few years before she started her long run on the Great White Way.
March Madness, St. Francis (PA)-Alabama State – We’re off and running with an exciting if not very well played game that ended with a chaotic buzzer beater. Games like this are a lot of fun to watch and I hope we get a few of this sort before the chalk takes hold.
Frasier, “Martin Does It His Way” – Frasier is asked to speak at the memorial for a not-even-a-little-beloved aunt, even as he discovers his dad has always wanted to write a song for Frank Sinatra. The weaving of these two just barely connected threads into one tapestry leads to one of the show’s happiest moments. Never mind how chock full we are of great gags. Always has been and always will be on my list of personal favorites.
The Shield, “Money Shot”
– Especially good Ronnie episode, as he packs two iconic moments into one scene: the “We all had choices once” mini-speech that is the whole show in a nutshell and “I’m not gonna drown for Shane, or for you” line that’s certainly not painful on a rewatch at all. That whole scene also nails how all this has worn him thin, too. When the guy who mostly que sera, sera’d half his face getting burned is feeling pissy and vulnerable about getting gnawed on by a pit bull, you know you have problems. David Rees Snell plays his exhaustion really well, especially when he gets into talking about how there’s no way out of all this and how sick of it he is.
– I actually love Vic’s reaction to Shane bluffing it out with Rezian to try to get them a better deal: “INTERESTING STRATEGY. ‘KILL HIS WHOLE FAMILY.'” Completely fair, honestly.
– More A+ Vic comedy: how dare Aceveda mess with the blackmail box before he got to mess with the blackmail box!
– The best Chiklis acting in the episode comes when Shane turns over the Only Copy of the Blackmail File, I Promise: it’s a fantastic doubled performance, where we can both believably buy that his speech about finally understanding and accepting Lem’s murder seems genuine enough to bowl Shane over (and great Goggins there too, with him tearing up at thinking Vic’s forgiven him) and read it as Vic actually almost choking on the words because he hates them so much that saying them makes him feel like he’s going to throw up. Most interesting to me this time around is that I think he does hate it, and is still completely unwilling to accept any part he had in this, but I feel like the long pause after Shane leaves has the fascinating implication that, having said it, some part of him is tempted to just go with it. Vic’s too much of a problem-solver to not see that on some level, forgiveness would be a potential solution here. Not a practical long-term one, as Ronnie would surely point out, because they still couldn’t guarantee that Shane wouldn’t get in trouble later on down the line, and now they know for sure he’d use them as leverage if he needed to. But a temporary way out of some of the stress and misery. And I think he rejects it, with that great sneer, not so much because of the practicalities but because he’s just had that conversation with Ronnie. He let Ronnie down today, and Ronnie just made his position on all this clear, and if Vic immediately disappoints him again, well, as he said once, he couldn’t look him in the eye. More ideas here that are painful on a rewatch.
– “Natural. But small.”
– Great Dutch-Billings plot–I love engaged Billings, and I love the way Dutch’s initial surprise at Billings putting in actual effort leads into some (at least temporary) respect and rapport. This season has been firing on all cylinders so far, and these strong case-of-the-week-or-two plots are a big part of that: this one is heartbreaking but also ceaselessly engaging. At some point, I really have to try to pick out my favorite case plots of the show, but I’m spoiled for choice. Dutch maneuvering to make Danny Claudette’s desk sergeant, therefore helping out both of them, is also very satisfying.
– And speaking of ceaselessly engaging: gun heist! Okay, a disproportionate amount of it turns on Shane hiding under a blanket (and getting up way too soon, Shane, give it a minute!), but the sheer audacity of it is still thrilling.
Mikey and Nicky — I liked this in fits and starts, but not enough. It has the problem that often bedevils these movies about difficult male friendships — why would Mikey even be friends with this guy? The movie makes some efforts to answer this question, but they come up short. Warren Beatty as the hit man worried about his mileage reimbursement is the best part.
Way better than Warren, it’s Ned Beatty! Possibly my favorite part as well. I said at the time and I think I stand by it, I don’t really care for this type of movie, but it may be my favorite example of this type of movie.
D’oh!
Royal Crackers S2 premiere – Really nails what America is like right now, including the rich setting up everyone else to fight for their own interests and a running gag where everyone, even the sexually harassed TV intern, squeals greedily about money like a Disney villain. All this and a final moment that reminded me of Looney Tunes’ laws of physics-breaking. Great show, the actual sequel to Arrested Development compared to Succession when it comes to comedies about dumbass rich people.*
Stebe calling a bunch of erotic thrillers “chick flicks” is pretty funny and weird.
*The Hornsbys also feel like the Bluths, they’re not megarich but Theo Jr. can get his tour bankrolled by his dad’s company.
An American Pickle – amiable comedy with Seth Rogen doing solid work in double roles and a fun fish-out-of-water premise. It falls into the “wait, was this a comedy?” trap though and kinda forgets to be funny while resolving the plot in the third act. Not an uncommon flaw but this is a goofy “man gets preserved in pickle brine for a century” movie, why were they so intent on pivoting into drama?
Justified S5, “Raw Deal” – a mid-season episode that gives Raylan a mostly standalone plot that feels like padding even if it’s fairly entertaining. Boyd’s plot moves forward considerably more in less screen time and Ava’s prison stuff is also going on to not particularly compelling effect. Hopefully this season will pick up a little momentum now that I’m into the back half. The most remarkable thing here is that it took 59 episodes for Dale Dickey to appear in this show.
It does feel like Dale Dickey should have just spontaneously appeared on set somewhere in S2, at the very least.
Still a bit confused about how she never showed up in Deadwood at all.
Yeah, it’ll do that.
Mickey 17 – Thank God for Twilight and the latitude it gave Robert Pattinson. He’s a lot of fun here, actors always relish a dual role, and he has fun making twin personalities out of one rather hapless guy. His… their? An unusual pronoun situation… interactions have been written as someone arguing within themselves and do more to reveal character than the chatty voiceover he uses throughout. Anybody who wasn’t a fan of Ruffalo’s hamming it up in *Poor Things* may be put off by his taking that character and, shall we say, making it 50% more presidential. But he and Toni Collette are the latest in a tradition of Bong saps in power. The movie of his this starts resembling the most is *Okja* in its creature concerns and conniving leaders. Decent Bong Joon Ho, which makes it several cuts above most anything else in theaters.
I also felt Okja was the closest comparison, for me that’s still the most effective example of Bong in “wacky sci-fi dark comedy” mode but this one got pretty close.
The Great North, “Bust a Moon Adventure”
I read the title and really hoped it wasn’t about Moon’s first wet dream. It wasn’t– after Beef grounds him, Moon decides to emancipate himself, and when his friends crash at his new pad, learns that adult life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
Meanwhile, Judy and Ham want mini-fridges (because of a trend on “VidVok,” which is what I think Letterkenny calls TikTok, too. Must be a north of the border thing). To make the money, they rent Moon’s now-vacated bedroom out on… I forgot what they call AirBnB. And for maximum comedic purposes, their tenant is an accordion player trying to set the Guinness World Record for longest consecutive playing.
Boat gag: The Shark Knight
Shirt gag: Fart School Confidential
Grimsburg, “Daddy Daddy Bang Bang”
“Oh, God, I’m dying! And I never got to shake Lena Dunham’s hand and thank her for her brief window of bravery!”
“Yeah, well, I’m 5½ clean. Now give me that list of names and a Mach 3 Sensitive.”
Marvin’s daddy issues come to the forefront this episode, as his badass-detective father rolls back up into town working on a case that’s made its way to Grimsburg. Marvin’s brother Junior also rolls into town with him– literally, because Junior is basically K.I.T.T. from Knight Rider. (How this works genetically, I have no idea.) Well, Marvin’s rivalry with his brother and desire for his father’s love reveals, naturally, reveals that his dad isn’t all he’s cracked up to be. But it does so in funny fashion.
Meanwhile, Stan thinks he had a wet dream, which means I was just wrong about which Sunday night Fox animated show was dealing with this. But Stan doesn’t understand what it was and Marvin is busy with his own daddy issues, so the rest of the precinct has to try to give him The Talk without being weird about it. Do they succeed? Absolutely not.
Show’s been sharper in season 2, all in all. The potential I saw in season 1, comedically speaking, seems to be more fully realized here.
American Dad!, “Guardian”
Kind of a War Games-meets-HAL scenario. Prompted by a co-worker’s son writing a college essay about how his dad is his hero, Stan decides to try to be Steve’s. He takes Steve’s algebra homework to the CIA’s supercomputer (the titular “Guardian”), which is intentionally disconnected from other systems and the outside world or even knowing what year it is. Stan inadvertently exposes Guardian to the real year and then to his phone… and Guardian starts installing itself on phones around the world to build its computing power, and then starts plotting to destroy humanity in nuclear hellfire. Oops.
I enjoyed this one. Also, the B-plot has Roger telling the rest of the family that déjà vu isn’t real, just a side effect of the deficiencies of human brains, so they decide to prank him by making him think he’s experiencing déjà vu.
The Simpsons, “Homer vs. the 18th Amendment”
I mean, it’s one of the holiday’s signature episodes!
I enjoy that Rex Banner, for all his Eliot Ness-ness, is actually incompetent and a violent maniac. (Which I guess means Springfield has both kinds of cops now, since Wiggum already has “incompetent, stupid, and lazy” covered.)
Also not a good sign for the Lisa to come as the show descends into its zombie years. I’m sure she’s read some things on when the law is unjust.
Scavengers Reign
Season 1, Episode 10. “The Decision”. First time.
Two more flashbacks to begin, one awe-inspiring and the other tender and humane. Very confident storytelling and it doesn’t strain the narrative. The decision in the title actually alludes to two separate decisions made by Azi (whether or not she can trust the miners: she can’t) and Sam (whether or not he can go on with the Demeter in sight: he can’t), and both have touching and terrible implications. And all the while the Kamen alien goes on, spelling trouble for everyone.
Season 1, Episode 11. “The Return”. First time.
All parties reach the Demeter, and we finally get the return of a new and improved Levi. The miners attempt to flee but are thwarted by the Kamen alien while Ursula and Azi try to wake up the ship’s crew from cryosleep. Some very good action and a quite gruesome near-death, which extends to the season finale…
Season 1, Episode 12. “The Reunion”. First time.
…which is also the series finale as the series was not picked up for a second season. This puts the end of a story in a strange place: the ending here is very satisfactory and arrives at a good cut-off point but it’s clearly envisioned as the start of a new chapter. There’s meaningful action, a cruel twist and a humane ending of sorts, so I can’t say they shortchanged the impact of the finale in favor of a continuation that didn’t happen, but I guess there will always be some doubt. There was also, in true sci fi tradition, a climactic moment involving a light and sound show, including one final trascendent montage for the road home. I question the logic that lead us there but I’m onboard with the execution.
All in all, a pretty remarkable, adult, standalone, entirely original sci fi animated show that falls just short of greatness but was still top tier. Would have made for a terrific Season 2, I’m sure.
White Lotus, caught up on the last two episodes.
Parker Posey is great as a southern matriarch. She’s going to get even worse as she sobers up. The extent to which saxon, piper, and the mom are like people I’ve met is alarming—does this mean everyone else is actually a grounded depiction? The dynamic of Jason Isaacs sinking further and further into a spiral of despair and self hatred while Posey gets drunker and more self-righteous is exactly the equal mix of pathos and comedy I expect from white lotus.
The three blonde ladies storyline is developing well. I told my wife I want a shirt with a giant shiny eagle on it like the bald russian guy’s, but she doesn’t think I can pull it off. (She’s right). Obviously the romance plot is where the action is but the maga lady talking to the bald russian about his tragic childhood is what I want more of.
Of course the goggins-rockwell scene steals the show. And it’s ramped up to a farcical level but it’s also thematically serious, as all the other plotlines are about the characters struggling to see themselves and (mostly) turning to sex to do so.
Great write-up of this movie and the strange conundrum at its center. I think it’s probably the better movie for not going full thriller, at least given the strengths the filmmaker shows throughout what we have, though dangling the possibility is interesting. As someone who is exposed to at least three coming-of-age indies a year, this one at least stands out by presenting its central character means, motive and opportunity (harpoon, teenage anger, and the bottom of the ocean respectively).
Thank you! It really is a fascinating movie, and even when I was vacillating on how far I wanted it to go, I was completely engaged with it. Really eager to see where the director goes from here–she’s especially good at all the terrible family stuff, with the conversations and interactions that turn cruel on a dime, but rarely in a way where anyone can intervene.