You Carry Me (Ivona Juka, 2015): Croatia | Slovenia | Serbia | Montenegro

Reviewed by Elizabeth Gain.  Viewed at Metro 4 theater in Santa Barbara, CA.

You Carry Me has already won a number of awards in film festivals around the world, and I can see why.  The film is directed and produced by a confident sister team who made an impact at SBIFF representing the future of strong creative women narrative film-makers.  With kinetic visuals, the camera follows the chaotic drama of real characters combined with remarkably clean storytelling.  In two and a half hours, there is enough time to become submerged in three different stories based on three different women and their interconnected worlds.  

The film opens with a clean introduction to the three characters:  Dora is a ten-year-old girl who fantasizes about sports reporting and has a strong connection to her on-again/off-again father.  Ives is a high-strung television director who takes care of her father with Alzheimers.  Natasa is a pregnant hero who takes care of everyone.  We eventually learn that they have connections to the same work place on a soap-opera tv set.  

Ives is my favorite character because she shamelessly explodes, expressing anger beyond the boundaries of what you usually see for likeable movie protagonists – and yet she is likeable and charming, and the audience sympathizes with her every step.  Dora’s story branches into a larger world as her parents figure out how to parent her.  We follow her resentful mother and we see the dark and light sides of her father’s world.  The film concludes with Natasa’s story, and we learn the surprising ways she remains a hero throughout relationship and physical travails.

Unlike many European-styled films, the pace of this film grabs you instantly, and the cinematography moves the story.  The camera follows right behind the shoulders of the characters and chases them through their journeys.  This gives a very intimate connection to the actors, and it feels like no one is holding back.   In addition to a modern music score, there is also a sprinkling of dream sequences and imaginative slow motion that lighten up the drama throughout the film, along with recurring imagery of mysteriously appearing rock walls.  Don’t be discouraged that it was filmed in the Balkans because the locations and scenery could be any industrialized European city, and the story is about modern people’s lives, with no reference to war.

Because the film creates so many real characters moving through important decisions and moments in their life, it reminds me of the movie Magnolia (Paul Thomas Anderson 1999).  I might also describe it as Hannah and Her Sisters (Woody Allen 1986) with an edge from the bold cinematography and kinetic editing.  The diverse female characters deal with diverse moral complexities in different ways.  It is incredibly satisfying that they defy all archetypes.

If you’re ready to engage with subtitles, and you’re looking for inspiring female characters with modern visuals, then you will definitely like this film.  It is a remarkable debut for a talented director and production team, and I will look to see what they make next.