★★★½
“Tree’s a crowd.”
Well, this is unusual. We’ve never had a movie from Slovenia here before, a country I know almost entirely due to art-rock band Laibach. This seems to be barely known either, with a mere 26 votes on the IMDb at the time of writing. But it’s decent, and doesn’t hang about: at 75 minutes, there is not a lot of slack. Indeed, it’s a rare occasion where I would not have minded if this had been 15-20 minutes longer. It is certainly spare in terms of actors, with only three roles of significance. Mia (Cok) and Kevin (Plantan) are a couple of confidence operators, who prey on rich women: Kevin seduces them, and Mia robs them. Their latest mark is Ema (Krhin).
Things go pear-shaped when Mia believes Kevin is getting too cosy with their target, and in a fit of jealousy, bludgeons Ema to death. To dispose of the body, they drive out into the woods [the only other Slovenian movie I have seen, horror movie Hillbillies, had a similarly rural setting]. However, while they are bickering about who should dig the grave, the corpse escapes, because Ema was merely unconscious, rather than dead. Mia and Kevin begin the hunt, knowing they’d be in real trouble if Ema makes it back to civilization. Kevin makes the ill-advised decision to snort some coke, followed by the consumption of some mushrooms he finds in the woods. That basically marks the end of his role as an active participant in the film.
Thereafter, it’s the two women facing off, and this is where I would have liked to have seen things extended. It’s clear that both women are seeking to tap into their inner feral nature, and more of it (along the lines of Revenge, perhaps) would have been welcome. Mia and Ema appears to be under the protection of dark and light angels respectively – perhaps representing vengeance and survival? I dunno, I’m just speculating: it’s another angle which might have merited additional explanation. Though what we get in lieu of development is still fun: Mia may be the most foul-mouthed female character of the year, spraying F-bombs about, at a rate which would make Dexter Morgan’s sister blush.
While the topic is clearly one which would lend itself to horror, events here play out as much in a vein of black comedy. For example, when Ema is wounded, she uses a sanitary pad as an impromptu Band-Aid. Hey, soaking up blood is soaking up blood, am I right? There are other moments which seem almost deliberately surreal, such as Mia hallucinating Kevin having sex with a tree. [Please read that sentence again, because it’s not one I expected to write when I got up this morning] It’s almost as if she was the one who had eaten the magic mushrooms. If there’s a lesson here, that’s probably it: when you go into any Slovenian woods, be sure to bring your own picnic.
Dir: Dejan Babosek
Star: Lea Cok, Darja Krhin, Marko Plantan
a.k.a. Jama
No trailer I could find, but the clip below shows the final fight. Probably a spoiler :)