Part of the appeal of Lithuanian director Laurynas Bareisa’s subtly powerful second feature, ( ), is that you never know if what you’re watching is taking place in the present, past or future. Time slips back and forth in a way that constantly pulls the viewer out of their comfort zone, although never at the expense of the story. If anything, the fragmented narrative only deepens the sense of tragedy that looms over this sober tale of two families whose summer holiday winds up going terribly wrong.
And yet, things seem to start off pleasantly enough for Ernesta (Gelmine Glemzaite), who heads off to a lakeside country home with her husband, Lukas (Paulius Markevicius, at times a dead ringer for Klaus Kinski) and younger son. They’re accompanied by Ernesta’s sister, Juste (Agne Kaktaite), her husband, Tomas (Giedrius Kiela, who starred in Bareisa’s first feature, ) and their daughter, who looks to be about the same age as Ernesta’s kid. As the families unpack their bags and settle into peaceful country life, some tension does already hang in the air: Lukas, an MMA fighter whose championship bout opens the film, managed to walk away victorious but also with a severe whipping.
Ernesta seems to have had enough of seeing her husband getting knocked around, and she keeps her distance from him during the opening scenes, tending to his wounds but otherwise ignoring him in the bedroom. Meanwhile, the marriage of Juste and Tomas is going through its own significant growing p.