QUIT STARING AT MY PLATE

Silent but defiant, a young woman looks out at her surroundings. In Hana Jušić’s raw feature-film debut, Marijana seems equally above the fray when it comes to the daily squabbles at home as she is when surrounded by the gossipy talk at the medical lab where she works. Her lips tightly sealed, she knocks out her work, and when she does bother to say something here or there, people infallibly act like she has just violated every boundary known to man. Beyond the tourist traps and holiday apartments, the boundaries in the alleys and courtyards of the Croatian coastal town Šibenik are quite strictly drawn. But Marijana doesn’t give a damn about rules and appearances; she has other things on her mind. When her domineering father suffers a stroke, she suddenly becomes the sole breadwinner for her four-person family. After the initial shock wears off, the burden of new responsibility brings an unimagined sense of freedom with it, though also a hint of understanding for the repressive ways of the family patriarch, now tied down to a bed. During her nightly outings, she breaks out of the far too narrow confines of her parental home as well as the constricting mesh of society’s moral prescripts. Marijana’s wild and at the same time introverted charm, embodied perfectly by architect Mia Petričević, is juxtaposed with the unconventional images of an entirely prosaic, rather repellent Šibenik and the enormous resistance mounted by the main character resounds throughout the length of the film.