Modra

The first moments of Modra wonderfully express the speed at which things happen when a person is in his/her teen years. Seventeen Year-Old Lina has just been dumped by her boyfriend Tyler, who weakly tells her to enjoy her trip to Slovenia (but she's actually going to Slovakia). Then, a seventeen year-old named Leco calls Lina, who does not recognize Leco's voice and must be reminded that her and the boy on the other end of the phone go to the same high school. After trying to ask Lina out on a date, Leco receives an invitation to accompany her on her trip to Slovakia since Tyler will no longer be going. Leco's father agrees, and the teens are soon in Slovakia. This all happens within the first five minutes of the film, with little melodrama and a lot of cleverly-placed ellipses that do not confuse the audience, but enhance the feeling of impulsivity that is so often connected to adolescence.

The rest of Modra deals with Lina meeting her extended family, which is spread throughout the small Slovakian town of Modra. Leco frequently attends these meetings and becomes Lina's friend very quickly. A romance inevitably blossoms between the two, but leads to unexpected places in the narrative.

Although the story of Modra might strike many as an Eat Pray Love scenario, wherein the main character goes to Europe to escape a bad breakup and finds love along the way (maybe). And, sometimes, only rarely, the film's predictability gets the better of it. But to dismiss the film as an exercise in cliché would be short-sighted and wrong. Within its simple narrative, Modra contains fine grains of subtlety. It visually and verbally expresses the nuances of its characters and their development with great care, precision, and true emotion. This is a film about the trials of adolescent friendship, and it feels as if director/screenwriter Ingrid Veningier took extensive notes when she was going through her own teen years.

Like "Y Tu Mama Tambien," Modra is, at bottom, a film about the intensity of teenage friendship and the problems that arise out of that intensity. I do not want to stress that comparison too much, however, because, besides their themes, the two films are very different in execution. Instead of learning about their sexual development while the country disintegrates in the background, Lina and Leco learn about their social selves during their peaceful week in Slovakia, and learn to understand the issues that plagued them before their trip, including the death of a mother and the blissful ignorance of teenage love. This development is not handled in a glib or maudlin manner, however, and every time the tiniest change happens in the characters, it happens out of a great internal struggle (that is expertly expressed by newcomers Hallie Switzer and Alexander Gammal).

Additionally, this is one of the first North American films about travelling abroad that I have seen which does not simply use Europe as a backdrop. Modra makes the audience feel as if they took a trip to a small Slovakian town, capturing the people, monuments, and customs very well without exploiting or exoticizing them. The supporting cast is outstanding. The performance of Branislav Durgovic as Cousin Branko is particularly funny and touching.

This is a great little film that captures what it is like to travel with someone you barely know, while simultaneously examining the arduous maturation process of adolescence. I would highly recommend this film to anyone who is interested in a good, simple story about youths abroad.