08/11/2023 - The comedy-drama by Jasna Nanut might not quite take us to the titular blissful place, but it is entertaining and peppered with tongue-in-cheek references to the way we live today

Croatian director Jasna Nanut’s feature Seventh Heaven has just opened the Zagreb Film Festival, after having had its international premiere at CinÉast, the Central and Eastern European Film Festival in Luxembourg, a few weeks ago. The feature’s hero, an overworked TV producer called Ninoslav Radman, is struggling with a major midlife crisis. He has been cheating on his wife for three years, but lacks the guts to admit it or to take responsibility for his life. It’s a clear failure to adapt to the demands of adulthood.

Krešimir Mikić’s nuanced performance as Nino is complemented perfectly by the rest of the cast. Iva Mihalić plays the betrayed wife, Ksenija, and Iva Jerković Oreski shines in the role of the lover, Tamara – it would be easy to victimise these characters, but the outstanding performances let the strength of both come through. Nikša Butijer plays Nino’s actor friend and “agony uncle”, Dinko. The former, afraid to come clean to his wife, regularly practices his confession with Dinko.

All of this sounds like a recipe for a Hollywood comedy à la Failure to Launch, but the story is loaded with digs at the way we live today – at work and in our relationships – and also about the place occupied by audiovisual artists in our entertainment-hungry society.

Nino is close to burn-out, suffers from high blood pressure and, at one point, complains: “When I started working for TV, I thought I would make quality movies, but instead I make mass entertainment.” When Tamara gets him to come on a wellness weekend, between mud masks and massages, Nino spends all his time on the phone with his boss. Like many struggling artists these days, Nino is stuck in a hamster wheel that he simply cannot step off.

Unfortunately, while very entertaining, the film lacks depth and a satisfying resolution. It feels as though the viewer and Nino are both left hanging in the middle of the eighth sequence – before their blood pressure has really had a chance to come down.

Seventh Heaven was produced by Croatia’s Petnaesta Umjetnost.