Milena Czernovsky & Lilith Kraxner's "Bluish": Glimpses of casual moments while walking through Austria

A masterpiece. Selected for the FIDMarseille 2024 competition section and winner of the Grand Prix. This is the second feature film from the directing duo of Milena Czernovsky and Lilith Kraxner. Like their previous work, "Beatrix," it is a quiet film that follows the daily life of its protagonist. As the title suggests, the film is filled with bluish imagery—blue-tinted spaces like rivers, swimming pools, and 3D data, as well as blue items like nail polish and jackets. The impression is close to Angela Schanelec's "Music" (both are films consisting of long, fixed-camera, one-scene-one-shot takes), but compared to that film, where characters complained about the heat in midsummer Berlin, this one just looks cold. The bluish visuals make it look even colder. This time, there are two protagonists: Sasha, a young Russian woman living with her partner, who switches between Russian and English in daily conversation; and Eroll, who is likely a university student as he is seen taking online classes. The film alternates between the daily lives of the two, showing them going to a public pool, taking showers, buying a TV, attending parties, sleeping, and going on dates. The intense focus on faces is likely because the directors want to follow their gazes. Eroll, who visits a hospital, exchanges silent glances with a girl sitting next to him, and stares into the eyes of and kisses a same-sex partner he met on a dating app—the idea being that when sharing time with a complete stranger, the eyes are the first thing to move. In the middle of the film, there is a line in the sleep-induction app that Sasha uses as she drifts off to sleep (this scene is a five-minute long take of her watching a darkened screen while listening to the app's voice): "Notice this moment and accept it." It is a phrase that could be called the essence of this work, which captures fleeting moments. Also, the end credits were surprisingly pop-like, which I didn't expect from the film.

・Film Data

Original Title: Bluish
Runtime: 83 minutes
Directors: Lilith Kraxner, Milena Czernovsky
Production:

・Rating: 80 points