Slovenian father Aleksander Krajl (Marko Mandic), his wife Olivia (Katarina Stegnar) and their teenage daughter Agata (Mila Bezjak) are on a travelator at the airport heading to meet his older, estranged son Julien (Aliocha Schneider), when Aleksander realises Julien is walking in the opposite direction. Aleksander is forced to pace against the walkway for the greeting, offered in Julien’s mother tongue of French. It is a deadpan, out-of-kilter moment that will come to be emblematic of a family in which a common language is hard to find, and which is increasingly out of step.
Writer/director Sonja Prosenc presents a bone-dry comedic takedown of this over-privileged clan in the Yorgos Lanthimos vein, with the sweet rebellion-driven connection that develops between Julien and Agata taking the edge off her more scathing moments of satire. The third film from Prosenc, whose previous works and were both Slovenian Oscar selections, is likely to get plenty of further festival play after Tribeca and Sarajevo, thanks to its intelligence and humour. Prosenc’s skewering of the nouveau riche, along with an absurdist Peter Strickland-style sideswipe at performance art, unfolds in an episodic style, via chapters.
While this approach means it loses the tautness of the opening act, her exploration of the family’s vulnerabilities and willingness to offer them redemption (of sorts) is likely to attract a wider audience than more unforgiving satires. “I became a man of nature,” Aleksa.