Raising Ghosts in Bosnia

Esma (Mirjana Karanovic), the focal character in “Grbavica: The Land of My Dreams,” is in many ways a normal single mother: She struggles to make ends meet, she reserves a generous part of her heart for her daughter. But Esma is also from Grbavica, and in this scarred quarter of the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo, memories of the Balkan War gnaw at her bones as persistently as the winter chill.One wartime trauma in particular chews away at Esma. But in this film, an earnest, earthbound lament by the Bosnian writer-director Jasmila Zbanic that opens today at Film Forum, it is loath to show itself. One morning Esma instigates a pillow fight with her 12-year-old daughter Sara (Luna Mijovic), only to sharply call it off the moment she’s pinned to the floor. A war veteran who courts this quiet, self-effacing woman — and presumably understands her better than we do — repeatedly tells her she’s “cracked.” Later in the film, she removes her shirt to reveal two long scars on her back.“To be closed, that’s the worst response we can have,” a counselor tells a group of women at the community center. And so we wait for the film — and Esma — to open up. Her ache may have something to do with her daughter’s father, who supposedly died a war hero but whose body has never been found. A dark secret lies at this story’s center, but Ms. Zbanic’s meandering script makes too many unfruitful detours before staking it all on Esma’s climactic confession — which doesn’t really deliver, either.That’s a shame, because Ms. Zbanic has an excellent feel for the nuances of this mother-daughter relationship, and her film begins to tease them out before those distracting subplots surface. Sara needs her mother but also wears her down to get her way. She’s at a prickly age, and has a budding interest in the opposite sex, especially the father she never got to meet: Esma has always told Sara that he was a shaheeb, a martyr in the war; but when a situation at school demands hard proof, Esma is slow to supply it and Sara’s trust begins to fray.Sara also grows suspicious of her mother when she spots her with a security guard (Leon Lucev) from the nightclub where Esma works. Is it a romance? Well, it’s not really clear what it is. Or why: Esma typically steers clear of men, and her eyes speak of hard experience; while she is undoubtedly sympathetic, she is not really the type to attract a handsome young suitor. You can’t blame Ms. Karanovic: Anthony Minghella’s “Breaking and Entering” failed to make a similar setup ring true, and he had Juliette Binoche to help him. Why can’t these art-house films be satisfied with middle-aged women who aren’t the object of some beau’s desire?Meanwhile, Sara takes a shine to a hard-edged schoolmate and initiates a flirtation of her own, albeit one seemingly designed (by the filmmakers, that is) for the express purpose of putting a gun in her possession. The proceeding scenes are thus injected with an acute suspense: Will Ms. Zbanic, sensing “Grbavica” is losing steam, end things with a bloody coup de grace?It seems doubtful. “Grbavica,” a well-mannered drama that took the top prizes at Berlin International Film Festival and the AFI festival in Los Angeles last year, embraces propriety as movies from this region are rarely known to do. (There is nothing peppery about it, and nary a whiff of caricature.) The shadow of fellow Sarajevo native Emir Kusturica (maestro of the rich, vaudevillian romps “Underground” and “Black Cat, White Cat”) looms large (and loud) over Balkan cinema, and seems to have left Ms. Zbanic looking for a room of her own.Many of the films that have arrived from the former Yugoslavia about the war — Srdjan Dragojevic’s “Pretty Village, Pretty Flame” and Danis Tanovic’s “No Man’s Land” come to mind — serve up a healthy dose of the anarchic or the absurd. Welcome tonics in the generously ponderous mix of European art-house fare, these elements also threaten to dominate the viewer’s idea of this powder keg region. That’s why it’s tempting to hail Ms. Zbanic’s measured approach — “Grbavica” studiously avoids sudden shifts of key and eschews the flashback chop suey that made “Pretty Village” almost unwatchable — as a promising departure. Unfortunately, her film is coated in the dull glaze of a healing ritual. The Balkan War may be over, but that doesn’t mean taking stock of it should be a formality.

Raising Ghosts in Bosnia

Raising Ghosts in Bosnia

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