Remember To Blink

Serpentine imagery snakes through this debut from Austeja Urbaite. It also proves slippery in terms of genre with its tale of adoption beginning in traditional drama territory before slithering into an unpredictable psychological battle for control.

The life of French couple Jacqueline (Anne Azoulay) and Leon (Arthur Igual) seems pretty idyllic. They live in a countryside home, where they are in the process of welcoming Lithuanian student Gabi (Dovile Kundrotaite) whose job is to ease the passage of two youngsters from her country into the French family as their mother is giving them up. Signs that this may not be quite the paradise it first appears are indicated early on when we learn that they initially only wanted one child but agreed to the pair in a bid to speed the adoption. Still, when sensitive little Rytis (Ajus Antanavicius) and his slightly older sister Karolina (Inesa Sionova) arrive, everything goes well at first. Gabi helps them to communicate and takes on the role of a big sister, playing with them and calming Karolina in their shared bedroom at night. Leon, though focused on his artwork - notably a mosaic of Medusa - also takes a playful approach with the children, while Jacqueline, whose history is gradually revealed, is much more inflexible by comparison, engaging in a battle of wills with Karolina over cheese and increasingly envious of Gabi's almost instant connection.

Urbaite shows stylistic ambition, cross-cutting elemental scenes with the family, including a raging fire on a hillside and a baby turtle struggling its way to the sea. Where other first-time writer/directors might have gone down the straightforward path of good guys and bad, she instead allows her story to snake through a more ambiguous emotional landscape as we realise that we are seeing each woman, at least initially, via the other's perspective, each freezing the other's motives to stone. At first, Jacqueline seem like the more jealous of the two, but envy can take many forms. Mistakes are being made but so are imperceptible accommodations, so that for every emotional outburst there are subtler indications of connection, such as a necklace betraying a closeness struck up without us noticing. Urbaite elicits naturalistic performances from her young stars as the resilient siblings, learning to cope as best they can unaware of the powerplay of the adults, while Azoulay and Kundrotaite bring intensity to their roles.

I'm not usually one to note titles, but in this case, the Lithuanian title Per Arti - which translates as Too Close - is pregnant with meaning rather than the rather esoteric Remember To Blink.

Urbaite's pacing is a little uneven, with late stage developments arriving in a rush, particularly regarding the relationship between Leon and Jacqueline, with its melodramatic flourish coming from left field in comparison to the intricately developed relationships elsewhere. Nevertheless this is a sinewy debut, with Urbaite unafraid of twisting emotions this way and that to reveal some unpalatable truths about the nature of adult relationships that reveal we might not be as grown up as we think we are after all.