Film Review - Moja Vesna

Images courtesy of Screen Inc.

Some movies are lacking, or quiet, in content - replacing whatever is missing with beautiful explosions and dizzying spectacles to keep you at bay until the credits roll and you text your buddies ‘that was mad sick.’ Other times, they are quiet in approach and delivery, holding back key aspects of their characters’ backstories, instead delegating this responsibility to an audience’s imagination in an effort for them to find their own reason to get invested. Moja Vesna might be the boldest attempt I’ve seen yet at taking a hands-off approach to storytelling, revealing so little that to spoil the film would be akin to revealing that the sun will rise tomorrow. 

So few actions lead Moja or Vesna, two first-gen Australian sisters, towards tangible consequences throughout the brief 90 minutes they occupy the screen, and in its place such a heavy burden is placed on the curiosity of audiences, that I can confidently warn that there is no closure to be found in a viewing of this meditative effort by Sara Kern: just a melancholic acceptance of the unavoidable, the inevitable, the predictable, while still retaining the shock that can come with the mundanity of silence.

I felt put to work as a viewer during Moja Vesna, but I suppose that is the vantage point of a child after all. Through Moja, the 10-year-old little sister of the justifiably hormonal, pregnant Vesna, we get to relive those awkward moments from childhood.  The ones where we didn’t know what to say, how to react, whether to cry, or whether to run away. Maybe that’s where I find myself placed watching this movie, and Kern does a bang-up job at recreating childhood misery - not that I’ve missed it. But it’s good to know that the feeling is still out there, waiting for a creative talent to bludgeon me with it again.

The dialogue is split between spoken English, and the family’s native tongue whose beautiful fluency I could not initially place, but eventually found it to be Slovenian. These kinds of illusive details reinforce the walls built up around young Moja, but do no favors for the great storytelling at the heart of the film which demands no credit. Moja Vesna rewards those with the patience to dig into the details.

Moja Vesna is screening in limited cinemas from Thursday December 8th. For tickets and more info, click here.