Throughout her prolific career as a film and stage actress, Mirjana Karanovic has never shied away from challenges. In her melodrama Mother Mara, her second feature film as director, co-writer and lead, she faced many challenges, including showing herself physically and emotionally naked. Mara is a powerful and successful businesswoman with platinum curls a la Marilyn Monroe, whose carefully constructed identity crumbles after the death of her 21-year-old son.
Even Mara’s grieving process defies convention. She refuses to step away from work or cry on someone else’s shoulders. Instead, she reignites her life force through an affair with a much younger man. Some viewers, who might find it perfectly acceptable to switch the genders of the two main characters, may find the older woman/younger man dynamic absurd, but the leads’ performances and the late plot twist do a good job of selling the film. Following its world premiere at the Sarajevo Film Festival, the film is expected to travel to other regional festivals.
The film opens with the funeral of Mara Nemanja's son (Pavel Semericic), who once shared her large modern home with her, featuring a floor-to-ceiling glass wall overlooking a swimming pool and elegant, expensive, neutral-coloured furniture. Mara has raised Nemanja mostly alone, her husband having left her early to start a new family. Despite his heart condition, Nemanja is about to start a new life, enrolling at the London School of Economics.
Mara's dry-eyed appearance at the funeral raises concerns and gossip, but she coolly ignores her sister's (Jasna Zalica) concern and hurries back to the office, a place she feels is still under her control. When Milan (Vuček Perović), a handsome 28-year-old personal trainer, comes to her office with a question about the property, and tells her that he knew Nemanja, she becomes curious.
With the help of Milan and her son's now unlocked mobile phone, she discovers that Nemanja has been hiding various secrets and not taking proper care of his health. At the same time, haunted by nightmares and filled with despair, she finds herself increasingly drawn to the vibrant Milan.
While Karanovic’s first feature film, A Good Wife (2016), dealt with modern history and the rebelliousness of a wife, the heroine of Mother Mara has long rejected traditional gender roles. By starting a relationship with a younger man, she defies stereotypes and clichés.
The production design by Dragana Bakovic and the costumes by Laura Luscher play a large role in defining Mara and Milan’s characters. She wears her tight, low-cut dresses, high heels, and bright lipstick to work like armor. At home, she can relax her guard in softer clothes. The jogging pants she wears in the film’s final shot suggest that she has moved beyond mourning and reopened herself to life’s possibilities. Milan, meanwhile, wears shirts open to his bare chest, showing off his lean physique, though he often appears completely shirtless.
The film's co-producers include two award-winning directors with Karanovic as the lead in their feature debuts: Bosnian Jasmila Žbanić for “Grbavica” and Croatian-Swiss Andrea Staka for “Fraulein”.
