Early in Urška Djukić’s Little Trouble Ladies, a short montage strings collectively pictures of shrines to the Virgin Mary scattered by the mountains, forests, and villages of Slovenia, the place the motion takes place. For a movie set within the Catholic milieu of a ladies’ choir, a preponderance of Marys isn’t in itself shocking. However with the shortage of corresponding pictures of Jesus (with one debatable exception), it takes on a heretical tinge, gesturing on the absorption by Catholicism of pagan fertility cults. For the teenage protagonist, Lucija (Jara Sofija Ostan), Mary turns into not solely an object not of veneration, however of need and identification.
On a summer time journey to a convent, Lucija befriends Ana-Marija (Mina Švajger), a woman her age however a lot much less sheltered. An ambiguous attraction simmers between them, because the realizing Ana-Marija coaxes Lucija into the mysteries of need and transgression. When, in a recreation of reality or dare, Lucija chooses dare to keep away from outing her inexperience, Ana-Marija duties her with kissing somebody. In an innocently sacrilegious method, Lucija kisses a statue of the Virgin Mary—a prelude to extra flouting of Catholic taboos on the half of each ladies. However their relationship comes below menace when Lucija mistakenly confides within the choir conductor (Saša Tabaković), who chastises her not directly by singling her out for ridicule in entrance of the entire choir.
The movie’s dreamy cinematography usually locations the viewer within the perspective Lucija, susceptible to trance-like reveries on the sight of magnificence. The sound design is simply as intimate, simulating the sound of blood ringing in her ears, for example, when she comes head to head with a unadorned laborer (Casson Matia) who bears a putting resemblance to sure depictions of Jesus.
All through Little Trouble Ladies, Ostan performs her character’s “virginity” as an ignorance of prejudice, a pre-indoctrinated state of grace. The woman is moved by magnificence in all its varieties, with out fairly realizing that are thought of acceptable for good Catholics. Lucija doesn’t but acknowledge a distinction between spiritual and bodily ecstasy, or between friendship and romantic love. She is aware of no disgrace or grief, solely curiosity. Her need is unformed, not but tamed, and this makes her coming of age a bitter one, if not completely tragic.
The hallucinatory closing scene leaves maybe too many dangling plot threads, however Djukić’s movie fascinatingly exhibits how Catholic ethical strictures and an underlying paganism the place need is holy are two sides of the identical coin. Disconcertingly, Djukić appears to trace that it’s exactly the depth of such prohibitions that conjures up and offers that means to the transgression of them. In a society the place all the pieces is permissible, the movie suggests, need may be unable to flourish, however in a roundabout means, this might be learn as justifying spiritual cruelty.
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Forged: Jara Sofija Ostan, Mina Švajger, Saša Tabaković, Casson Matia Director: Urška Djukić Screenwriter: Urška Djukić, Maria Bohr Distributor: Kino Lorber Working Time: 89 min Score: NR 12 months: 2025
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