Are we ever truly happy as we are? Is the grass always greener on the other side? Lithuanian writer-director Gabrielė Urbonaitė makes her solo feature debut with Renovation [+leggi anche:
intervista: Gabrielė Urbonaitė
scheda film], which pokes and prods at these questions without ever falling prey to the clichés of the relationship drama. The film has enjoyed its world premiere in Karlovy Vary’s Proxima Competition; Urbonaitė has collaborated previously on several features, and her 2013 short The Swimmer won a Silver Crane, Lithuania’s national film awards.

Twenty-nine-year-old Ilona (Žygimantė Elena Jakštaitė) – a work-from-home journalist from Norway – and her boyfriend Matas (Šarūnas Zenkevičius) move into a new flat right as a massive, noisy bout of renovation work is beginning. Ilona, who can’t concentrate on her work at all with the noise, is pissed off; meanwhile, Matas appears unbothered. While the building’s Soviet-era façade is being fixed up, cracks reveal themselves in Ilona’s seemingly perfect life, furthered by relationship tensions with her partner when she hits it off with Oleg (Roman Lutskyi), a Ukrainian worker helping with the titular construction.

Renovation is a curious, delightful beast that, at times, borders on a dry-humoured dramedy driven by situational irony while at other times taking on the sentimental romantic themes of a work like The Worst Person in the World [+leggi anche:
recensione
trailer
intervista: Joachim Trier
scheda film]. Urbonaitė embeds within the film a flavour of archetypical Iranian cinema, where one small occurrence or encounter sets off a chain of events that begin to spiral out of control. However, she grounds the story locally by bringing in topical conversations, such as a hypothetical Russian invasion of Lithuania, over which Ilona and Matas spar. Without a formal musical score, many scenes are driven by the performances, including that of Jakštaitė, who delivers a vivacious and relatable Ilona.

With lensing by Vytautas Katkus (the DoP for Toxic [+leggi anche:
recensione
trailer
intervista: Directors Talks @ European…
intervista: Saulė Bliuvaitė
scheda film] and with his own feature debut, The Visitor [+leggi anche:
recensione
trailer
intervista: Vytautas Katkus
intervista: Vytautas Katkus
scheda film], in competition at Karlovy Vary) in 16 mm, the camera has a tendency to meander around watchfully but never voyeuristically, giving us a terrific sense of each character’s physicality and how it’s tied to each of their anxieties. The movie takes place almost entirely in the flat complex until the end, when our characters are finally freed from the pressure-cooker environment that pushes them into a frenzy. When watching the protagonists, the camera stays almost exclusively inside, giving us a sense of Ilona’s cabin fever; in one almost reality television-like moment, we watch Oleg and his wife from a window many stories above while they talk outside the building. Special nods go to sound designer Iveta Macevičiūtė and production designer Sigita Jonaitytė for putting the finishing touches to the environment, crucial to capturing the emotional stakes that lie in the little things in life.

Renovation is a Lithuanian-Latvian-Belgian co-production by Studio Uljana Kim, Mima Films and Harald House.