By Linda Winsh-Bolard
Lazar, a young physician has a near death experience after a car crash. His head on collision leaves him with an inexplicable memory of endless light tunnel and shadowy figures on the site of the accident. It also leaves him confused.
He recuperates in his parents opulent seaside villa, but is wife prefers to spend most of her time alone (or rather without Lazare), his child is almost a stranger to him and his pushy mother (Sabina Ajrula-Tozija,) who has controlled most of his life, is getting on his nerves.
In addition to all this even his city life gets very odd: his apartment door lets an old woman in, his fridge rots his food, his new neighbor leaves bloody footprints wherever he goes and the child that lives with him always cries.
True, the old woman speaks, but Lazar (Borce Nacev) doesn’t understand what she is saying because she speaks an old Aegean dialect. Disturbed, he tires to take a picture of her, tape her voice. Both attempts fail. Then he phonetically writes down what she has said and seeks help with translation.
Which when he meets a beautiful woman Menka (Vesna Stanojevska), who says she is married to the professor of languages out of town on a conference. Menka translates the sentences as "Return what's not yours. Have respect.”
Lazar is bewildered and Menka indicates that if he does not own anything that was stolen, perhaps somebody in his family does. She is inconsistent, strange, inviting, mysterious- the perfects seductress and Lazar falls for her.
At the same time he is afraid that he is going mad. More and more often he sees people nobody else seems to, talks to them, touches them and then they disappear. His life becomes series of mishaps and misunderstandings. And he begins to suspect that it is all somehow tied to the Macedonian Aegean genocide from 35 years ago
That part, the discovery of the largely forgotten tragedy of people whom nobody wanted, is the best and most enlightening part of the film. I also found the description of today’s Macedonian society interesting, the difference between the privileged and the working poor, possibly accurate. I know very little of the country, its system and its real life. I had never suspected that it is so beautiful. Camera and editing make the most of the seaside and countryside and some of the shots are amazing.
As far as the main plot goes, I am part of a culture that strongly believes in chindi, once the bones were mentioned, I already guessed. People with different backgrounds would probably take longer. On the other hand, the presence of spirits doesn’t surprise me, nor do I equate them with haunting in the usual sense.
Even so, it gets to be too long, and too slow for what it says, much of the sex and wandering around should have hit the floor of the editing room. Borce Nacev does a credible job as mom’s boy striking out, uncertainly, on his own, hunky but weak. It is his job to grow up, the task he is given, because he is there, is just part of growing up. Sabina Ajrula-Tozija is wonderful overbearing power obsessed, scruples mom and Vesna Stanojevska makes her character to carry the tension quite well.