Imena Višnje

An elderly couple returns to a village once destroyed by war. Here life consists of repetitive chores; he collects water, does the shopping, and repairs the damaged caused to the farm. She cleans and prepares meals. As he grows increasingly short-tempered, she withdraws into herself and becomes ever more absent-minded.

A brand-new car drives across a grey autumn landscape. The street is flooded and many of the adjacent buildings have been destroyed by war. A son returns his parents home, back to the past. Kata and Slavko are to resettle in the village they were forced to flee many years ago. This new beginning consists for the main part of recurring procedures and behavioural patterns: chop wood, fetch water from the river, tidy up the barns and warehouses. This is no rural idyll however, as Slavko reacts to the increasing signs that his wife is suffering from dementia with a mixture of anger and even cruelty. Kata would like to have a cherry tree in the garden, and yet Slavko refuses to even entertain the idea; it is these minor arguments that come to dominate everyday life, as Slavko gradually takes on the role of a short-tempered patriarch for whom his wife's weakness is nothing more than a burden.

Branko Schmidt, one of modern day Croatia's leading film directors, depicts the evolution in the everyday existence of a couple in this intimate portrait of stubbornness in old age, a sense of helplessness vis-à-vis growing infirmity and an inability to find consolatory words. WMH