TAKE ME SOMEWHERE NICE: Too Much Starting and Stopping

Ena Sendijarević’s Take Me Somewhere Nice is a movie most cinema-goers have probably seen before, at least in pieces. It’s a road movie that takes tonal cues from both 1980s Jim Jarmusch fare like Stranger Than Paradise or Mystery Train and 2000s Sundance indies like Wristcutters: A Love Story but by way of the impassive style of Eastern European art films. We get a lot of shots of characters lazing around looking up at whatever might be above them – the sky, a beige ceiling, a fan, some trees – and shuffling through their existences as if fed up with the idea of existence itself. There isn’t really any existentialist plane to this movie though, it’s more a manifestation of wayward youth reveling in their own malaise and in the case of the central character, Alma (Sara Luna Zoric), trying to escape it through love and sex.

Out of Place Furniture

The cinematography does most of the legwork in the movie. Sendijarević and her DP Emo Weemhoff’s technique comprises of many off-center shots in 4:3 that highlight the eclectic architectural surroundings of Bosnia & Herzegovina, showcasing Alma as an out of place piece of furniture standing in some corner of the screen. Zoric’s performance is also a high-point, with slight gestures of sarcastic tone and subtle transitions of feeling that crack through her stone-faced demeanor from time to time.

She is an adolescent girl coming from the Netherlands to Bosnia to visit her father who is in the hospital. She stays with her cousin Emir (Ernad Prnjavorac) and his “intern” (the guy who assists him on odd jobs), Dennis (Lazar Dragojevic). She is attracted to both of them in various ways and the movie makes no hesitation in centering Alma as a sexually curious and active character, which comes in complete contrast to the aloof and boring nature of her day-to-day existence and acts as a remedy to it.

An Awkwardly Paced Sexual Awakening Journey

Alma’s role as the film’s central character and by and large only major female presence make gender an ever-present issue in the movie, but it is woven in naturally through passing conversation and character dynamics – highlighted by the positioning of people within the frame. Sendijarević deliberately keeps Alma’s legs almost fully uncovered the entire movie and the camera aware of them at all times. During sex, her legs are the center of concentration. Almost every time Alma encounters a man, the movie goads the viewer into expecting a sex scene.

It isn’t gratuitous, however, and this is a case where it’s almost a literal character development moment – either one of catharsis or of crippling dissatisfaction. On the flip side, the women she is with offer a sense of consolation and safety – in one sequence where Alma is stranded by the side of the road and tries to hitchhike, a woman picks her up and Alma names the town he wants to go to. The woman only responds “I don’t care where you’re going, just get in, are you crazy?” There is a presentation of Alma as a free-roaming spirit trying to break out of the banality of her adolescence yet the movie seems lethargic and staggers in an awkward manner for most of its duration, at the whims of a phlegmatic central character.

Conclusion

There isn’t any poised direction but it’s also not a freely roaming movie in the way Stranger than Paradise is. Take Me Somewhere Nice exists in an uncomfortable no-woman’s-land between choosing a path and abandoning all direction. While this can be symbolic of the confused sexual adolescence of its central character, it doesn’t work as an artistic choice. There is an awkward push from time to time, like jumpstarting a broken-down car, reminding everything to start chugging along again.

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Take Me Somewhere Nice is playing in virtual cinemas in the U.S. 

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