BIFF 2011: AS IF I AM NOT THERE review

Juanita Wilson's As If I'm Not There is hardly a bad film - there's a lot in it that's courageous, unsettling and frequently horrifying - but perhaps the clearest indication of how far it falls short of being something great is that, despite all the terrible things that happen to the heroine, you can't stop thinking of everything the director's doing wrong. As If... is adapted from a novel by Croatian journalist Slavena Drakulic about the ethnic cleansing that went on during the conflict in the Balkans, and there are times when it's as savagely raw as the material demands. For some reason, though, Wilson seems unable to resist pitching the story as some kind of chocolate-box melodrama, with swelling, manipulative strings and big emotional moments exactly as tacky as that description would suggest, and she returns to this well so many times the film leaves the overriding impression it's doing real life a disservice at best, openly insulting it at worst.

The story starts with the young heroine Samira (Natasha Petrovic) leaving Sarajevo behind for a tiny rural village where she's taken a position as the local schoolteacher. Vivacious and extrovert, flaunting her hair without a headscarf, she's obviously being set up for some kind of a fall. As it happens, only a short while after her arrival the Serbian military turn up, corral the villagers, burn the place to the ground and pack the women off to a warehouse in the wilderness. It turns out it's a staging post for the army, where the old and unattractive get the menial jobs, but those who catch the soldiers' eyes have a far more horrible fate in store. Brutalised and demeaned, Samira can't see any escape in sight, until she decides if there's no help coming and she can't rescue herself, she can at least go along with her captivity to the extent she won't be treated like an animal any longer.

Anyone who's seen very many films about the horrors of war will recognise most of the intro here, yet it's always apparent these are real events as much as plot beats. Samira's a typical innocent abroad who has no idea what's she in for but her mounting terror, reflected in her fellow prisoners' reactions as the reality of their situation sinks in, is impossible not to respond to. While it's grimly obvious what's going to happen regardless of whether you went into the film blind, Wilson manages a creeping feeling of dread helped in no small amount by Natasha Petrovic's performance, all wide eyes and increasingly rigid body language as her incredulity gives way to cowering submission. The key sequence where Samira herself is raped pulls virtually no punches, a relentlessly horrible slog that piles degradation on degradation until the audience are stunned into silence.

The trouble is none of this ever quite overcomes the feeling that, despite the savagery and vileness of it all, there's a layer of sugar on top of the proceedings that flatly shouldn't be there. It's part playing to the home team - As If... is not completely black and white, but there's no suggestion Croats did anything like this. It's part lack of any real character development that doesn't come through victimisation - Samira's constant disbelief seems just that bit too pronounced to be quite real (were regular people on either side really completely ignorant of what the conflict had sunk to?). But it's mostly the idea that the story's best served by a full-on Hollywood score dripping with pathos, and crushingly unsubtle direction for things other films know to show briefly or leave to the imagination.

Again, the film is horrifying, no question - but Wilson doesn't seem to understand what moments have the most impact. Even the rape itself reaches a knife edge of tension only when Samira attempts to tune out what's being done to her, focusing on a fly perched on a nearby wall. The sight of a young girl's hand trembling so much she can't hold a spoon to eat is far more emotive than the women being taken captive, not to mention what happens to the same girl later on (clearly telegraphed a mile off). Brutality is brutality, no argument there, but when it's set up with tired, uninspired dramatic gestures without the honesty or the visual flair to carry it home these things just don't have the effect they ought to. The final sequence before the epilogue in particular is clearly well-intentioned but so shockingly saccharine it's alternately laughable and deeply, deeply frustrating.

Something like Elem Klimov's masterpiece Come And See shows barely a fraction of what Juanita Wilson forces on us in As If I'm Not There, but it's infinitely more effective, leaving you utterly shattered by the end. As If... has obviously been put together out of a genuine desire to do right by people whose suffering in the Balkan conflict went unnoticed for a long, long time, but it feels as if the director's empathy for the subject matter overwhelmed whatever artistic vision she started out with. What should be a punch to the gut ends up over-produced, formulaic and confused, and only worth a cautious recommendation.

(As If I'm Not There was screened as part of the 17th Bradford International Film Festival, which ran at the UK National Media Museum from 16th-27th March 2011.)