There’s a moment in Ena Sendijarevic’s artful, deliberately absurd debut where a stroppy-sexy Dutch-Bosnian teen, Alma (Sara Luna Zoric), notices some underfed fish, floating in a tank, and chucks a pile of fishfood into the water.
Too much, too late, I thought, bitterly (having found much of the film, up to that point, extremely wearing). Yet, somehow, Sendijarevic’s offering ends on a vital note.
Alma returns to Bosnia to meet the father she never knew and ends up hanging out with her screwed-up cousin, Emir (Ernad Prnjavorac) and his puppyish (but not entirely innocent) intern, Denis (Lazar Dragojevic). Alma dyes her hair blonde, has sex with Denis, tries to reach the hospital where her dad is waiting for her, loses her suitcase, meets two jaded adults, reconnects with Emir and Denis and stumbles upon some drugs.
What happens in the final act — right around the time the intoxicated trio career around in a battered car, listening to Sonic Youth’s Kool Thing — is that the characters stop feeling like symbols of disaffected youth. And Alma stops being the central character.
All three teens appear equally worthy of attention and, just like that, you realise Sendijarevic has taken you somewhere worth going.
Mubi
