01/07/2024 - Lilith Kraxner and Milena Czernovsky sign a meditative, experimental sophomore film that is more of a trance-like cinematic concept than anything else

Not blue, but bluish [+see also:
trailer
film profile] – even with just the title of their movie, Austrian filmmaking duo Lilith Kraxner and Milena Czernovsky immediately present their audience with a premise and an idea, more than a concrete image. Maybe it’s a colour metaphor or something that simply evokes an emotional state, like the bluish hue of skin and lips when gasping for air, or the sign of dusk brought on by the final streaks of the sun disappearing from the sky. Lost in translation, lost in space, or perhaps even lost in life? The film is certainly not lost on its audience, with bluish having enjoyed its world premiere at FIDMarseille and winning the Grand Prix in the International Competition (see the news).

The film very loosely follows the daily lives of Errol (Leonie Bramberger) and Sasha (Natasha Goncharova), two young women who live in Vienna, the latter of whom speaks Russian and English, and thus experiences a different form of distancing with her immediate environment. We witness them in Zoom classes, checking out furniture and art exhibitions, meeting new people and, most importantly, simply existing. Kraxner and Czernovsky’s first feature-length effort, Beatrix [+see also:
film review
film profile], also premiered at FIDMarseille in 2021, where it drew comparisons to Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman and its perfectly engrossing routine repetition. bluish, while not extensively more narrative, also includes some experimental sequences, such as sections from a blue 3D environment (drawn from Rebecca Merlic’s experimental VR film GLITCHBODIES) and audio-only moments with a black frame.

Kraxner and Czernovsky – who undertook writing, directing and editing duties – solidify the film’s hazy and transient feel with beautifully grainy lensing by Antonia de la Luz Kašik. The art department, composed of Hanga Balla and Pauline Stephan, brings this world to life in colour choices down to the minutiae, bathing the entire production design palette in a cool-blue hue. Beyond the colour grading, the implications of the title float down to blue clothing, blue wall tiles, blue bottles, blue liquids, and even the blue reflection of phone screens on faces. But these choices never stand out like a sore thumb – instead, they sink into the subconscious viewing experience and cling there.

It is certainly not everyone’s cup of tea, but the style and technique of evoking liminality, through which the film sticks to the insides of one’s brain, are undoubtedly effective. With the directors’ subjective and phenomenologically driven approach, we're meant to simply linger and dwell, not concentrate on the specifics of each scene. Kraxner and Czernovsky place viewers in a state of remembrance, where time isn’t linear and memories pop up through the fog, not always with the same degree of clarity. These snapshots of Errol and Sasha capture our characters’ always-heterotopic place of being, a certain transience in their mobility and disconnection arising from today’s world. Here, it’s about neither the journey nor the destination – instead, it’s perhaps something always floating in between.

bluish is an Austrian production by Panama Film, with world sales overseen by Square Eyes.