52 Films by Women Vol 6. 37. MURINA (Director: Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović)
If you contrast a film’s opening and closing images, you can sometimes summarise what has happened in the drama. At the beginning of Murina , the debut feature of Croatian co-writer-director Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovi ć , the camera is under the water looking up. We see black ripples spreading from right to left before a man and a woman, both bearing spearguns swim into frame. The man is leading but the young woman next to him is close to his side. Even before we see them, we experience the water audibly, specifically the sound that accompanies air bubbles rising to the surface. Convention depicts this as a heavy noise, the reverse of a rockslide. It is as if we can feel the weight of the water on the swimmers’ bodies. In the closing image, filmed from above the water – the camera looks down from the sky – a lone woman swims by herself, not hunting but heading in a straight line. She cuts a confident, powerful figure – we have been told that she has shoulders like a man. We worry...