CH.FILM

Cure - The Life of Another Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Switzerland 2014 – 83min.

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Cure – The Life of Another

Movie Rating: Pascaline Sordet

Linda was born in Croatia, but grew up in Switzerland. A little after the war, she returns to live in her father’s homeland and meets Eta, an adolescent of the same age. The two girls get into an obsessive and sensual game of changing identities, which turns dramatic. When Eta dies, Linda slowly begins to take her place in the family, sinking into lies and anguish, haunted by the phantom of her friend.

Eight years after the very beautiful Das Fraülein, Andrea Staka returns to the screen with her second drama, this time more personal and complex, which mixes up the same troubled waters that lie between Switzerland and the Balkans. Thanks to this excellent story, loosely based on a news article, she shows how Linda is pulled back and forth between two nationalities and her strong desire to belong to a place and a family. Cure – which means "the girls" – is symbolic and illustrative, whereas Staka’s debut was realistic and harsh. The director goes on an adventure into a different mental space without losing directorial strength, but with the risk of sometimes confusing detours. The audience gets lost in the stillness of the young protagonist, who detaches herself from the nightmare her life becomes, and the uncertain role Eta’s family agrees to take on gives the film an air that is somewhere between fantasy and psychological thriller. But the expressive power of the countryside around Dubrovnik and Linda’s beautiful, worried face compensates for any complications in the screenplay. Staka’s approach is courageous, she has risked not making the same movie twice, instead offering a film with magnificent images, in which the audience should dare to get a little lost.

06.11.2014

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