REQUIEM FOR MRS J.

Mrs. J. wants to die. Jelena – that’s her first name – plans to shoot herself on the anniversary of her husband’s death and she only has a few days left to make her final preparations. True, she doesn’t live alone, quite the opposite in fact, but at home the other generations lead parallel lives (the mother-in-law) or routinely address her in exchanges full of cursing and shouting (the daughters, one fully grown, the other prepubescent). Alone the somewhat awkward future son-in-law is friendly and attentive. Alas, none of that gets through to Mrs. J anyways: she has long since cut herself off from family and the outside world. Architecture plays a fundamental supporting role in Bojan Vuletić’s film: drab government offices from the socialist era; deserted factory floors, drafty and eerie; and the globally omnipresent, familiar monstrosity of home improvement stores and supermarkets – all habitats seemingly incapable of supporting human life and inanimate witnesses to a transition, one which seems to have lead to a human and ideological void. It’s not a stretch to posit that the J. in the film’s title could also very well stand for Jugoslavija. REQUIEM FOR MRS. J. speaks about the “little people” and for them, about and for women, who carry the heaviest burden in times of upheaval and hardship. With great empathy and copious black humour, the film tells of the price which the soul must pay when old societal structures have collapsed and the new order pushes individuals to the margins of their own lives.