‘Perla’: Rotterdam Review

Dir/scr. Alexandra Makarova. Austria/Slovakia. 2025. 108mins

A single mum who fled the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia, Perla (Rebeka Polakova) has carved out a life for herself and her daughter in Eighties Vienna. She’s a rising star artist – her daring, sensual canvases have caught the attention of a New York gallerist – and her younger daughter Julia (Carmen Diego) is already a gifted pianist. A relationship with an older man, Josef (Simon Schwarz), brings a newfound stability and safety to her life. All of this modifications, nonetheless, when Perla is contacted by a voice from her previous on this taut and satisfying iron curtain drama by Alexandra Makarova.

 Taut and satisfying iron curtain drama 

It’s the second characteristic movie from Makarova, who loosely attracts inspiration from her personal life: she is Slovak-Austrian and moved to Vienna to reside together with her artist mom. Her debut movie, 2018’s Crush My Coronary heart, additionally explored concepts of id and displacement by way of it’s story of two Romany youngsters from Slovakia despatched to beg in Vienna. Perla has a lot going for it: the central character – a feisty, forthright and unconventional younger lady with peroxide hair and a wayward streak – is delivered to life in a rewardingly textured efficiency from Polakova. The movie’s tonal shift, from character research to one thing nearer to a thriller, can also be deftly dealt with. Additional competition curiosity is probably going and the image might discover a dwelling on a curated streaming platform. It actually establishes Makarova’s place as a promising expertise to look at.

After a quick 1968 prologue wherein we hear a information broadcast about Soviet navy actions in Japanese Europe (Czech residents are warned not to withstand the advancing troops), the principle physique of the story begins in Vienna, 1981. Perla’s hand-to-mouth existence and free-spirited Bohemian nature frustrate her daughter. “Can’t you get a cleansing job?” she pleads, when Perla can’t discover the money to pay for Julia’s piano classes. However a party stuffed with artwork world movers and shakers proves to be extra profitable: Perla charms the birthday boy, Josef, who leaves his companion for the spiky younger émigrée artist.

There’s a touch that Perla’s present life has been constructed because of the cautious re-writing of the previous. “I didn’t flee,” she says firmly and repeatedly. “I acquired a scholarship.” Different particulars, together with the id of her daughter’s father, are rigorously filed away. Perla shuts down any questions by claiming that he’s useless. A cellphone name from an acquaintance from her former life reveals this to be a lie. Julia’s father, Andrej (Noël Czuczor), is because of be launched from jail (the place, we assume, he has been a political prisoner) and is determined to fulfill his daughter. Makarova’s certain hand as a director is clear within the terrific scene in Perla shares the information with Josef, each seated within the viewers for a piano recital wherein Julia is competing.

The usage of music – the rating is sparse, jittery and percussive – provides to rigidity that ramps up significantly when Perla, utilizing an Austrian passport with an assumed identify, Josef and Julia journey to Kosice (now in Slovakia however, on the time that the story is about, nonetheless Czechoslovakia beneath the fist of Communist rule). For some time at the very least, Perla is caught up within the thrill of reconnecting together with her former lover – to Josef’s apparent chagrin, the chemistry between Perla and the lean, tall, poetically tousled Andrej is all too palpable. However Andrej just isn’t the person he as soon as was, and Perla appears blind to the dangers she is taking beneath the watchful eyes of the authorities.

The image’s manufacturing design is especially efficient in capturing the shift between the free-thinking creativity of Perla’s world in Austria and the austere, oppressive formality of the state-run resort in Kosice. Much more of a shock is Perla’s return to the village the place she grew up. A run down, bleak group stuffed with hostile eyes and violence, it reminds her, maybe too late, of what she ran away from within the first place.