Plain, Pain: Grbavica

Yvette Bíró

Sarajevo, mon amour has become the telling French title of the Bosnian film Grbavica (2006), the first feature by a young Sarajevan woman, Jasmila Zbanic (it is also known in English as Esma's Secret). This fiction debut will doubtless remain one of the memorably genuine and upsetting films about the true nature of war. Facing the unspeakable matters of human humiliation, naked to the bones – however, there is nothing to be seen here about the atrocity of violence which afflicts thousands and thousands of people, let’s name them immediately: women – it is harrowing, shaking. Its emotional power, thanks to an unadorned simplicity, is profoundly far-reaching.

The story is modest. Esma, a not-terribly young single mother brings up her teenage daughter alone, with tender love, yet under severe constraints, sacrificing her whole life to Sara. The father is said to be a ‘war hero’, thus giving a particular status to the girl at school. In order to participate in the big school excursion a moderate amount of money is needed, yet this is hopelessly missing at home. But those students who can prove their orphan status with official documents can go for free. Sara asks about the certificate but the mother is unable to provide it, although she tries by every means possible to raise the miserable two hundred Euros, to no avail. Meanwhile, Sara’s suspicion has been aroused and, in the course of a fierce confrontation, Esma has to admit that she is a bastard, the offspring of terrible series of violent rapes that she suffered in a prison camp where she was forced to give birth to this hated, unwanted baby. Sara is not the daughter of the war hero of whom she has always been proud, but the child of unnamable, anonymous enemy soldiers, barbarian rapists.

The film deals in a respectably subtle way with the unearthing of this doleful secret. The suppressed shame about the uncommitted crime, the unspeakable lie, casts a particular shadow on the woman’s gestures (interpreted remarkably by Mirjana Karanovic, familiar from Kusturica’s When Father Was Away on Business [1985]), which we do not fully understand at the beginning. Her wavering movements and her anxiety to make relationships apparently deprive her of uninhibited freedom, even timid pleasures. Moving around in the snowy winter in her clumsy coat and heavy shoes, working thanks to the capricious favor of a Mafioso in his disco bar where she can hardly fit into the pink-violet waitress uniform ... We have to feel that her life is marked.

Nevertheless – and this is the great merit of the young writer-director – Esma is a disarmingly enticing, likeable person. There is no bitterness or sullen behavior in her normal activity. Strong, stubborn-willed in achieving her goal – to offer a better life for her daughter and satisfy her needs – Esma is resourceful, deserving the helpfulness of her ex-fellow worker friends. Since, despite the horrifying memories of her degradation and past defenselessness, she radiates an incomparable warmth. So much so that this initially unseductive woman can become beautiful, with shining, smiling eyes, even a kind of playfulness. The unselfish dedication and intelligence with which she is able to make her days, the profound attention with which she observes and follows the ongoing events, reveal a rich, sensitive human being. We easily identify ourselves with her – not because of compassion due to her past sufferings, but because of her individual talent and spirit to fight for her living, to do what should be done.

As the story unfolds, many intriguing episodes occur. There is no shortage of surprising scenes. Sara’s situation at school keeps permanently changing: a challenging relationship with a boy who has an apparently similar background (the loss of a father) – they become close, but not without skirmishes. Sara’s classmates may respect her, but they also envy her. And with her much-loved and admired mother, Sara cannot merely remain obedient: she is full of rebellion, as teenagers must inevitably be, whether about the most quotidian facts of life (loud television listening, dirty nails, etc) or simple jealousy, at one point seeing her mother accompanied by an unknown man. Stormy moments alternate with utmost kindness. This would be ‘normal life’ if it were not about to be undermined by an unspoken secret.

The film starts with a peculiar, emotionally captivating scene in which middle-aged women are sitting around, humming sad songs. Pain and sorrow rule the mood, as we slowly follow the faces, neither beautiful nor unattractive, but doubtless sharing the same distress. This overture does not betray anything specific; only the melancholy is foreboding, as an intonation keyed to the film’s deeply buried story. It is, we understand later, a support group for raped women, apparently gathering regularly; the scene returns at the end of the movie, this time with Esma’s first outspoken confession. Hurt, profoundly and irremediably injured, she speaks out and nothing could be more authentic than her cascading, uncontrolled tears, her broken words ... She cries for everybody – the shame is not hers, it becomes ours.

The great merit of Zbanic’s film is that she dares to keep it small. The story does not try one bit to dramatise the indescribable horror, to evoke the half-buried past. This is an honestly frank film about survival: about everyday events, normal clashes and efforts, struggling with poverty, lasting traces and natural desires. What happened is obviously irreversible, but continuity still prevails. Yes, life goes on, with the scars and also with the irrepressible smiles that accompany daily existence.

There is courage and sensibility in its simple treatment. This is the reason that the basically undisturbed flow of the plot is credible and touching. The young teenager (played by Luna Mijovic) is always believable in her sudden mood changes and rhapsodic behavior, right up to the last seemingly irrational, savage gesture: to shave her hair in order to give expression to her terrible, angry disappointment upon learning the agonising truth. And precisely this ‘exaggeration’ brings about the return of peace. Both between Sara and Esma, and between Sara and her sometimes mocking classmates.

A first feature is always full, sometimes with external scenes presumed to be spectacular, or overly familiar ‘evil’ characters – and these do appear here and there in Grbavica. However, we can forgive such faults, because of the overall effective vitality and simplicity that reveal an inner emotional truth.