Worth: $18.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Noomi Rapace, Alice Englert, Sara Klimoska, Anamaria Marinca, Kamka Tocinovski, Carloto Cotto, Anastasjia Karanovich
Intro:
… carves out a particular path to understanding life that is as timeless as the folk tales it takes as its source.
Australian-Macedonian director Goran Stolevski’s debut film You Won’t Be Alone (he has since also made Of an Age which recently picked up the CinefestOZ Film Prize) is a philosophical treatise on what it is to live wrapped in the skin of a genre piece. The film set in 19th century Macedonia follows the travails of the young witch Nevena (Sara Klimoska) and her struggle to understand humanity after being hidden away for the first sixteen years of her life.
You Won’t Be Alone commences with a wolf-eateress (witch) named Old Maid Maria (Anamaria Marinca) striking a bargain with Navena’s mother Yoana (Kamka Tocinovski), who tries to protect her infant from the predatory creature. Yoana promises her daughter to the witch at age sixteen. To ensure the pact is carried out, the witch scratches the tongue of the infant Navena, rendering her mute.
Yoana hides Navena away in a cave to protect her from not only Old Maid Maria but also the local villagers who would kill someone marked by evil. The result is that Navena learns nothing of life except for the paranoid visits from her “whisper-Mama.” On coming of age, she is collected by Maria and given eternal life by her witches’ spit. Maria is fuelled by rage and cynicism (the reasons why will be explained later in the film) and finds Navena’s naïve rapture with the world around her pitiful. To survive, Navena must learn that she must consume nature, not admire it. Navena’s ineptitude as a huntress and her affinity with the creatures she is meant to devour, angers Maria and eventually the older witch leaves the younger to endure on her own.
One of the powers of the witch is transmogrification into any animal or human whose viscera and heart they ingest. When Navena accidentally kills a young mother, Boliska (Noomi Rapace) protecting her infant, she takes the opportunity to live in her skin. From being Boliska, she learns the hierarchical nature of society. Men are allowed to be violent to women, women wear the violence with resignation. Boliska’s village presume that she has been made mute by one too many blows from her husband. Yet, despite the paid that Navena endures in Boliska’s body, she also learns about the resilience of women.
Rapace gives an astonishing performance as a woman puppet. She walks with the gait of an infant and models her behaviour on those she observes. Eventually Boliska/Navena does something that means she must flee from the village and once again Navena finds herself adrift.
Navena’s first skin will not be her last. As circumstances propel her, she takes on a variety of forms, from a dog to a man (Carloto Cotto) and finally a child, Bilian (Anastasjia Karanovich) who grows to be a woman (Alice Englert).
Stolevski’s script works in clever metaphors about gender, sexuality, and performativity. A child that Cotto’s Boris/Navena encounters becomes the husband of Bilian/Navena.
Navena’s quest to understand life and humanity is shadowed by Old Maid Maria, who constantly warns her that people will turn on her. Maria’s visage is scarred by burning and she cannot forgive the cruelty that was shown to her as a woman. Navena understands that people are cruel and “it’s a burning, breaking thing, this world,” but for every dreadfulness she encounters, there is a balancing beauty. Navena gets to live the magic of being a beloved child and then wife, learns what it is to be a mother (something Maria was denied). Her musings on life that form the voice-over narrative for the film are filled with questions but also with answers.
Stolevski’s folk horror is not without gore and moments of extreme violence, yet the film has a fairy-tale magic to it, albeit more Brothers Grimm than the sanitised Disney fare audiences are used to. The cinematography by Matthew Chuang lusciously captures flashes of sublime splendour and also gut-turning ugliness. Chuang’s work is more than sympathetic to Stolevski’s script and direction, it is able to convey Stolevski’s narrative when the director chooses to be silent.
At its interchangeable heart, You Won’t Be Alone is a sophisticated tale that affirms existence. Navena’s understanding of the failures of humanity are punctuated with an “and yet…” It’s not the first time an ostensible monster discovers the wonders of living (many versions of ‘Frankenstein’ cover that) but You Won’t Be Alone carves out a particular path to understanding life that is as timeless as the folk tales it takes as its source.
