Not blue, but bluish [+lee también:
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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 [+lee también:
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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.