Wake Me

For a character in a film to see themselves as others see them, it generally requires subterfuge, or a magic doubling. For Rok (Jure Henigan), the reason is much more everyday - a bang on the head, in an incident never fully detailed, from which he wakes up in hospital with memory loss. With no recollection of his immediate past, including the life he shared with his girlfriend (Živa Selan doing a lot of work with slight material), he retreats to the last place he remembers clearly, the hometown, where he lived with his mother (Nataša Barbara Gračner) and younger brother Jure (Timon Sturbej).

The fearful way his mother reacts to him is the first indicator that something isn’t quite right, a feeling of disconnection between how Rok feels about the place and how the period he can’t remember shaped how others feel about him. This sense of distortion is emphasised by director Marko Santić (co-writing with Sara Hribar and Goran Vojnovic) from the start with the use of shallow focus and reflections that disturb our view of Rok or cause him to appear almost doubled. Rok’s mum says: “It’s complicated - that’s just how he is.” But how, exactly, is he?

Rok isn’t sure, at least not at first, as he accompanies his brother on a night-time spray-painting foray. The younger man is an impressive artist but for Rok, like everything in this new, uncertain life, the bigger picture isn’t immediately clear. There’s a moody tension to Henigan’s performance as what begins as a frustration about being unable to recall his past, slowly shifts towards a mixture of fear and guilt what exactly he might discover. Animosity also waits for him at the local cultural centre along with another man whose life was also changed irrevocably by violence. The lost memory device is used to sharp effect as Rok is able to see his actions 'third person' rather than feeling them in the 'first person', bringing home the horror more sharply to both him and us, since he is left only to guess what his motivations might have been in the moment.

As Rok tries to fill in the blanks, he also becomes increasingly concerned about Jure’s racist behaviour, fuelled by Rok’s old friend Damjan (Jurij Drevenšek), who seems to have radicalised the teenager in his absence. Rok doesn’t need to remember everything about his own past to see that the future for Jure on his current path looks bleak. The film is showing in the new Critics Picks section at Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, which seems an appropriate spot given that despite its urban realism, there’s also a strong sense of style.

Beyond the distorted reflections of Rok, Šantić also finds contrast between the pretty lakeside setting of the amnesiac's recent life and the unforgiving urban environment of his hometown of Jesenice, with its highrises and rundown railway yard, all caught in the flat, bright light of winter. There’s more than a suggestion from the director that the environment can affect a person’s emotional trajectory, along with an admonishment for those who refuse to face up to the past.

Jan Vysocky’s often disonant score also helps to sustain the atmosphere of threat, as events begin to come to a head. The ending is abrupt, which may prove frustrating for some, but Šantić strikes an impressive note of ambiguity caught between resignation and hope.