Showing how paradise can be hell, this audiovisual treat is spiritedly played by its leads and bristles with a brooding menace that can't quite disguise the story's essentially melodramatic nature.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
The Film Stage by Jared Mobarak
Murina proves a coming-of-age tale dealing with more than the usual tropes of puppy love, sexual awakening, and identity-building.
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.
Little White Lies by Laura Venning
Anchored by four very strong performances, Murina is a taut psychodrama that makes subtle but impactful statements about misogyny and personal choice.
The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw
All this is acted with smouldering intensity and authenticity, particularly by Filipovic, although it’s possible to wonder if there is anything unexpected to come in the third act, or if we can roughly guess where it’s all heading.
A murky, vaguely sinister, but ultimately dreary coming-of-age film about a young woman’s blossoming sexuality under the spell of her mother’s old flame.
Murina is a superb study in sustained subliminal menace, with Gracija Filipovic especially skilled playing a young woman learning how to utilise her sensuality to secure her freedom
The Observer (UK) by Wendy Ide
The atmosphere, of sun and celebration, rings as hollow as the Europop that Ante blasts to drown out arguments; sonar-stabs of cello on the score sound a warning