‘Murina’ Review: A Sinister, Sunny Croatian Coming-of-Age Makes for an Exceptional Debut

If Patricia Highsmith had ever written a coming-of-age story set on the rocky, clear-watered Croatian coastline, it might have looked a lot like Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović’s bright, brooding debut, “Murina,” which quietly, with a sinister Adriatic sparkle, makes the compelling case that even without labyrinthine murder plots or hard-bitten private eyes, a young girl’s passage into adulthood can be the perfect, darkly dazzling vehicle for a sunshine noir.

As at home in the water as out of it — in fact the sea is maybe her refuge from more dangerous currents of life on land — Julija is the lithe, surly teenage daughter of beautiful, unhappy, trapped Nela .

Julija’s rebellion manifests in small ways. She sulks about having to go spearfishing with Ante, and when he has her recite a poem as an entertainment for his guests, she deliberately omits the line in which she must beg the ocean to return her voyaging father to her. But the chafing also encroaches on her relationship with her mother, whom Julija seems to blame for being with Ante at all.

“Murina” is rife with symbolism, but it’s a mark of Kusijanović’s command — an astonishing quality for a first-time feature director — that the recurring motifs and metaphors are worn so lightly and feel so organic to the film’s microcosmic universe. The moray fish that gives the film its title, for example, is not only a local delicacy for which Ante and Julija frequently go hunting; it is also a solitary, territorial species, with sharp teeth and a bite that can be toxic to humans.

All this atmosphere, the evocative sound design and the occasional dreamlike underwater sequence make what is quite a Spartan, simply plotted film feel complete, sleekly changeable in different light, like an eel. The uniformly excellent cast breathe life into characters who might on the page seem underdeveloped, with the two women outlining a uniquely strange and strained mother-daughter bond .

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