The magnitude of the shock is cleverly underplayed in a striking long take as Vera goes through the terribly mundane, awkward business of getting in through a bathroom door against which his body has slumped.ĭoruntina Basha’s sturdy, unsentimental screenplay never overwrites.
She doesn’t seem to notice Fatmir’s stonefaced reaction, and so has no inkling of his state of mind when in her brief absence while she pops down to the shops, Fatmir smokes a final cigarette and kills himself. She gives the good news to Fatmir as part of his birthday present, chattering delightedly about the apartment they can now buy for their struggling actress daughter Sara (Alketa Sylaj), a single mother with a strained relationship with Father, as well as about the holidays and home improvements they can make. Finally, Vera hears that since a highway is being built nearby, the place will be bought over at last. In one such village, Fatmir and Vera have a small house which they have been trying for years - she more than he, it is implied - to sell. Out in the countryside, villages are still run by de facto councils of local menfolk, whose handshake deals and wink-nudge gambling debts carry more weight than the strict rule of law. But while she can rightly consider herself self-made - the kind of well-liked woman whom shopkeekers trust to pay later if she’s caught short at the store - it’s perhaps also true that she has never really considered how much her marriage to Fatmir (Xhevat Qorraj), a respected retired judge, not to mention the capital city’s relatively progressive urban environment, have shielded her from the most biting excesses of Kosovan patriarchy. Vera is a successful sign-language translator, who lives in a comfortable, if by no means fancy, apartment in Pristina.
#TURN OFF ASTUTE GRAPHICS PLUGIN TV#
This we infer from the very opening shot of her placid face, overlaid with an image of a gently sparkling ocean, as she has makeup applied for a TV appearance. It’s been a while since Vera has had to tap into those resources. It’s Vera’s individual reserves of resilience that allow her dormant independence to tentatively blossom, making this nuanced, nervy story as much a character portrait as it is a social critique. But this compact, elegant movie, which is edited by Krasniqi and Vladimir Pavlovski along a deceptively dreamlike yet pacy bias, is not just engaged in tokenism. As frankly and fearlessly embodied by a terrific Jegeni, Vera is onscreen almost every moment, which is already a coup given that few are the films that take a woman of this particular lifestage and social class as their heroine. Under the high-tension whines and see-sawing violins of Petrit Çeku and Genc Salihu’s sinister, interior-monologue score, we’re introduced to Vera, a middle-aged interpreter for the deaf. It’s not just an idle fantasy of beach holidays and salt-rimmed cocktails - though Vera (Teuta Ajdini Jegeni) would like that too - but as Kaltrina Krasniqi’s taut, sorrowful narrative feature debut “ Vera Dreams of the Sea” proves, the vision of a vast blue expanse stretching out to a far horizon can also become tacitly political for a widow who suddenly feels the weight of Kosovan patriarchy bearing down on her already burdened shoulders. Dreaming of the sea takes on weightier significance when the dreamer lives in a landlocked country.