Safe Place touched audiences at Locarno and Sarajevo Film Festivals before opening Zagreb Film Festivals to a full theatre and kind reviews.
Safe Place opens with a title card, a script note even. And a lot of uncontained energy. Writer, director, and unintended lead Juraj Lerotić is trying to break down an entrance door of an apartment building. Once he’s in, he runs up flights of stairs, reaches the intended apartment and tries to break in again… Slamming his brother Goran in the face in the process. But this isn’t slapstick. His brother is bleeding. He needs an ambulance. More franticism. Then… Quiet. Bar minor exceptions, the atmosphere remains quiet for the rest of the movie. Deflated. Sluggish. Curious, but rarely boring.
The dormant strength of Safe Place is in persistently shedding the light in deep, dark places. These places never become bright but you can begin to make out the monster from the shadow. And the monsters caught up in this family tragedy vary from indifferent medical professionals, bored or just plain stupid police officers, hopeful but oblivious family members.
It is easy to see why Juraj Lerotić chooses to work through his own brush with a suicidal family member by retracing his steps in form of a movie. And he does it with appropriate tension and confusion. For all the talent in Safe Place, his performance is the one that never falters. (If we don’t count the running scenes but that’s more his directorial misstep.)
Where this movie draggs isn’t the meditative moments between hope and horror that transpire in interactions between Goran and his mother and brother. It is in the mundane everyday that helps gloss over the inexplicable. Goran’s family want to do what’s best for him, sure. But they haven’t confronted what he did to himself yet. So for all their attempts at dragging answers out of doctors and nurses, they aren’t equipped to make decisions for Goran no more than he is.
Where Safe Place drags is in attempts at artistic relevance. One of the more obvious moments of this aspiration is in the photo of Goran that is handed to the police twice during the movie. In it, Goran is awkwardly standing on the pier while young boys jump in the sea behind him. They spread their limbs as they jump so that their poses are reminiscent of birds. The moment in the photo will become the closing shot of the movie.
Juraj Lerotić’s feature debut Safe Place is a reinterpretation of a tragic event in his life. His story is powerful enough not to need to rely on stylistic exercises for meaning. If there is an artist’s view of this story, his talent can’t reach it just yet. It is a calculated attempt at portraying and explaining something that will never provide a satisfactory answer. The movie’s relevance is in its honesty, in its existence. The artistry punches a little too high above its weight.
