Serbian film director Ivan Ikić made his splash on the international scene when his debut feature, Barbarians, premiered in Karlovy Vary’s East of the West in 2014 and won a Special Mention. The film took a naturalistic look at Serbia’s football hooligans, with non-professionals playing characters not dissimilar to themselves. Now, Oasis which has just world-premiered in Venice Film Festival’s Giornate degli Autori Ikić does something similar, but shifts the setting to an institution for young people with special needs.
Split into three chapters named after each of its three lead characters, it begins with a newsreel-style report about the foundation of the institution just outside Belgrade in 1969 as it segues into the opening chapter “Marija,” during which we see the eponymous teenage girl arrive at the asylum accompanied by carer Vera (Slovenian actress Maruša Majer). She makes fast friends with another girl called Dragana (Tijana Marković) and soon gets close to Robert (Valentino Zenuni), a taciturn boy who helps out in the kitchen. He never says a word, but while this kid might not be what one would call strong and silent he glides through the place like a Buddhist monk there is definitely something magnetic between him and both girls.
So we have our strange love triangle, moved into Dragana’s chapter after her jealous attack on Marija quickly becomes very physical indeed. Romance is drama for these kids; their fatalistic understanding of it means that every conflict turns into either love or death. Pregnancies whether imagined or real play a big part here; violence and self-harm too and because two of them may not stay together (or any other combination of two people), they make suicide pact when institutional rules disallow it. By the time we reach Robert’s chapter, where we also get to know the caretaker in the boys’ pavilion played by Croatian actor Goran Bogdan, things have moved well beyond simple teenage melodrama.
Based on a strong concept, Ikić’s film instead of using real actors who would be able to portray all the emotional nuances uses ellipses as far as storytelling goes and relies on viewers to fill in the blanks. There is only one scene (crucial for them) in which all three have substantial acting tasks; it is executed brilliantly, with Ikić relying on Miloš Jaćimović’s shadowy lighting and naturalistic camerawork.
But naturalistic doesn’t mean simple. In the first chapter, camera and sound are subjective and put Marija at the very head of the challenging narrative. In the second one, the viewer feels like being person always following or talking to Dragana, while in the third chapter approach is as objective as it can possibly be we see Robert from the standpoint of two caretakers; which represents society’s point of view and it ain’t pretty.
However, Ikić avoids generalizing, just as he did in Barbarians. It isn’t difficult to think that nothing has changed for these people in the last five decades and so the director limits himself to hardly noticeable switching from the opening newsreel to the film’s story while staying in Serbia. Instead, he concentrates on their lives within certain environments. Each frame is full of catching details, with other inmates acting as a lively backdrop. The location becomes another persona an unseen power that doesn’t care about its wards very much.
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