I just spent an hour waiting in line for tickets, another hour waiting for O to arrive, another 2 1/2 hours in which we sat through a ballet (he was watching intently throughout its entire course while I almost fell asleep) and another hour getting home together. Now it’s 11pm and I’ve been wanting to sleep since 8pm or so. Bottom line: I feel reminded of that morning after seeing “Call me by your name” when I rushed to get to “Requiem for Mrs. J” by 9.30am. Thankfully it worked out well time-wise, but having slept some 5 hours or so I knew beforehand that I’d fall asleep. (Amusingly, Loris told me I slept through a sex scene when I was noting that I hadn’t seen any during this Berlinale.)
There was also a Q&A at the end which Loris attended but I ran back home to get some sleep before picking up O again, and I looked forward to resting before the next day, which was my most anticipated day of all.
Rekvijem za gospodju J. (Requiem for Mrs. J)
Serbia/bunch of other countries 2017, Bojan Vuletić, 94′
Jelena lost her job, and ever since her husband’s death almost a year ago, there is nothing in life for her. She decides to kill herself with a pistol on the day her husband died, but till the week is over, she has to put things in order: She needs to cancel her life insurance, get her name onto her family grave stone, re-new her health insurance card. Every step seems to get more complicated than the previous one, leading to kafkaesque scenes.
I had pretty high hopes for this film, and I wouldn’t say it was bad. In theory, this film could have been right up my alley: I like the subtle black humor it suggests in its title, and the general premise of a woman who wants to prepare her own suicide but meets crushing bureaucracy and a rigid societal system. Sounds like something I like, right?
While Loris was really into the film, I have no idea why the film didn’t click with me at all. Maybe I was too tired to sit through a slow-paced film (but I was tired when I saw “45 Years” so that doesn’t count), maybe I have too little knowledge or understanding for the circumstances in Serbia, maybe I just didn’t find Jelena compelling enough as a character because she actually did very little in the film. The last scene, which I could tell was set up to be an emotional, almost hopeful ending, left me rather non-plussed.
However, the most noticeable part for me was Jelena’s relationship with her daughter. I absolutely understood the daughter’s complaints about her mother not doing anything around the house (she literally sits by the table a lot), when rationally I know that Jelena, having recently lost her job and her husband, would have no interest in housework. But in the way she was portrayed I had a hard time getting on her side on the emotional level. (Perhaps in a different medium, like a book, this would have been different.) I also didn’t really buy how the daughter ended up reconciling with her mother based on nothing (or so I felt). It’s not like she knew that her mother was (essentially) coming back to life, and it’s not like her situation or their relationship had actually changed for the better.
I have a soft spot for films from Eastern Europe, and I doubt that will change with this one, because from what I remember it’s the first of its kind ever that somehow didn’t work for me.